


Fifth Iteration

by universe_c



Series: Fifth Iteration [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Eggs, Human/Troll Hybrids, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, N-drangles, Philosophy, Polyamory, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Pregnancy, Xeno, hermpreg?, past Vriska/Tavros, sociological speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-18 16:51:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 51,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/universe_c/pseuds/universe_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after Tavros Nitram comes back to life as a weird alien, he accidentally knocks up his favorite clown. He's not sure if he's okay with that and it doesn't really help that his friends are all up in his business. Of course, when there are only thirty some-odd people in the whole world, everyone is always up in everyone's business. There is simply no other business to be up in.</p><p>A fic about a village at the beginning of a universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You can now follow me on either [Tumblr](http://universe-c.tumblr.com/) or [Dreamwidth](http://universe-c.dreamwidth.org/) for updates, meta and extras.
> 
> Thank you to tumblr user kdubzart for drawing me [this glorious and NSFW 5i GamTav!](http://kdubzart.tumblr.com/post/51570511792/universe-c-asked-that-i-draw-something-from-their)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected event; the first meeting of many

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a fluffy little happy-ending style GamTav fic of the kind I've been searching for since I fell into this fandom. Instead it got sidelined into unbridled worldbuilding, speculative xenobiology, xenosociology and character study. 52k later, it is possibly the most overthought mpreg fic ever. Originally posted unprompted on the Homestuck Kink meme.

The village is beautiful from the sea.

Its cliffs and stone buildings are chalk white, rising in terraces around the cut of its river valley, decadent with trees in all colors of the spectrum. A tower guards each of the two bluffs which wrap around its bay, one fluttering with flags, the other crowned with the steel struts of Sollux's radio antenna. Further back in the valley proper, the low bulk of First House lounges on a grassy rise. Slanted morning light catches on the red roof of the co-friendleaders' house next door and picks out the cottages and cabins scattered at the edge of the trees. Terraced fields and garden plots give way to a fringe of dunes and waving saltgrass. Windmills spin bucolically in the rising breeze, reminding you mostly the hours of maintenance you and Equius put into them.

The green ribbon of the river spills into one side of the green bay, which is swollen with the highest tide you've seen since you settled here. The little house you share with Gamzee sits in the shadow of the cliff, close to the sand. You'd thought it was a comfortable distance, but now the waves lap not very many steps from your front door. You're glad you built it up on stable rock, a ledge above the sand proper. The tide will probably climb even higher in the next few days as three of the four moons come into conjunction. Eridan guides your sailboat expertly around the line of breakers that marks the new, now submerged, breakwater. That was another project that left everyone wrung out and exhausted for days, especially the telekinetics. You hope it will come through without too much damage. 

You gentle the breeze as you near the beach, preparing to hop out and help drag the heavy boat in to shore. You were terrified of boats at first, the ghost of your dirt-brown blood screaming for dry land. But your body is new and different like this world is new and different. The blood flowing through everyones' veins is the same animal red now, and the gills at everyones' necks made you all at least a little bit seadweller. Only the former sea-dwellers plus Roxy are truly able to live in water indefinitely. But your own small pairs of gill-slits along with your new legs gave you enough confidence that you'd actually learned how to swim, splashing and shrieking with everyone in the twilight. Your powers let you hold your Breath much longer than some people with lots more gills than you. Your Breath powers also mean that you get press-ganged into a lot of fishing trips, so it's a very good thing overall that you aren't afraid of boats anymore.

Gamzee splashes out to meet you in jeans and bare feet, catching the bow. You feel the gritty crunch of sand under the daggerboard. Eridan and Roxy are jumping out, laughing at some comment one or the other made and Gamzee is reaching for you with his huge, gentle hands. He kisses you on the mouth, arms twining around you, pulling you hard up against the gunwale. His tongue flicks the seam of your lips pleadingly, so you open a little and let him trace the blunted angles of your teeth. You suck a breath through your nose. The smell of him makes you dizzy.

“Jeez, you two, get a cabin or somethin,” Eridan drawls. “Or, at least help us get this shit landed before you start pailin fuckin indiscreetly in the middle a the public beach.”

With some difficulty, you peel Gamzee away from your face and look back at your friends. They stand in the waves, stabilizing the other side of the boat so you and the night's catch don't tumble indiscreetly right out of it. Roxy is amused, indulgent. Eridan is endeavoring to look annoyed, his smile squashed into a disapproving squint. There's ease and good humor in their faces, the satisfaction of hard work and a shadow of disbelief still common to all those who the game spat out in this world, just over half a sweep ago. It is not, you think, an expression that Eridan would have ever worn back on Alternia. 

Gamzee's coaxing fingers and a low murmur of “Tav,” bring your attention back to him. His face is olivey tan with melanin, his hair catching indigo iridescence in the predawn light, his scars picked out in purply-pink. You fall into another kiss like falling into sleep. You hardly realize what you're doing until Roxy and Eridan are playfully tugging the boat away, tearing your lips apart. 

“Break it up! I have important fish-related business to rub our fearless leader's face in. Another record catch, schools so vast we couldn't see the water between, like to see him do better and similar. Am I just talkin to myself here or what?”

“Uh, sorry, guys,” you stammer. “Gamzee, what-” 

Gamzee plucks you bodily over the side as if you weigh nothing. You should be annoyed. You are a little annoyed - he knows you've never liked being carried. And he's kissing you, tenderly, desperately, making small sounds in his throat. The waves wash up around your thighs, soaking your shorts.

“C'mon Er, this ain't a sight fit for delicate ladies such as ourselves,” Roxy giggles. Her imitation of Eridan's accent is almost perfect, but her voice somehow sidesteps mockery into affection. Their splashing and banter recedes with the heavy drag of the fish-laden boat on the sand. 

You'd never managed to find Gamzee in the dream bubbles. You'd looked and waited and searched without really admitting to yourself it was for him. Finally, you got a glimpse of him when you and Vriska became a sprite. He was still alive but empty-eyed and strange and then Vriska had freaked out and ruined it like she ruins everything. After that, you'd finally let yourself think of him. You'd worried for him every step of your long walk through the desert of the afterlife. 

And then Karkat and Terezi and the humans had _won,_ and the whole lot of you waiting in the furthest ring had been pulled back into life. Twenty four trolls, eight humans and a cherub appearified in a new universe, transformed into something that was like and unlike a troll or a human. You'd searched the crowd for him as people gathered in the wreckage of ejected sylladexes that marked the closed Door. When you finally spotted him, he was still standing at the edge of the trees, as if he were afraid to come closer. You'd elbowed your way out of the milling mass of aliens and started toward him. He watched you, still as rock, disbelief and hope and joy and sorrow all layered together on his sharp, unpainted face. You felt like someone scraped out your guts, empty and light. With each step toward him, the wound bled pity and hot tenderness until you were full again. You'd kissed him when you reached him, kind of the way he was kissing you now.

You bury your face in Gamzee's shoulder, gasping. He smells of the sea, the smoky-yeasty-sweet smell of the village kitchens, and something else that gives you the urge to tear his clothes off with your teeth. He slots his face between your horns, his lips cool in the stubble along your mohawk.

You are hardly able to let go of each other enough to stumble home. You leave a trail of wet clothes that starts on your front step and leads to your respite platform. 

“Had the itch all night,” Gamzee pants, sprawling backwards onto the sheets. “I need you up in my nook, motherfucker.” 

He spreads himself, showing you everything. His nook is inflamed, blossoming purple-pink and ready, with a dew of opalescent-indigo fluid. His bulge is halfway out of its sheath – thick and tangling with his own fingers as he teases his nooklips wider. He is beautiful and strange and shamelessly exposed. You have both become strange creatures. You reach for him and the distance between you collapses in an instant. 

He hooks you close with one long leg, fingers painting the scent of his arousal on your face. Your bulge slides out, dancing with his thicker bulge all over your stomachs, twining and sliding wetly until you see stars. 

“Tav, Tav,” he croons, “Motherfucking get inside me right now.”

You moan against his lips. Your bulge wants to bury itself in him, but the intensity of this wanting makes you nervous. You don't want to hurt him, don't know if he could tell the difference in his weird desperation. You concentrate hard, letting your thin tip dart in and out, shallowly, teasing him like he teased you with his tongue the first night you'd tried Roxy's wine. 

“Gamzee,” you whisper. 

His bulge thrashes, desperately trying to nudge you toward his nook. “Please,” he moans, hips grinding into yours. “Please.” Then, “Fuuuuuuuck,” as you let yourself sink inside him, his nook spreading soft and hot around you. 

One of you makes a strangled noise, but you're far beyond being able to tell who it is. Your matesprit clings to your every surface as if he'll never let you go. Your bulge knows what to do without any direction from you, sinuous and searching in his nook, playing along every turn of it. You've never been so aroused, never really knew there was so _much_ to your bulge. It is thicker even than his at the base and he takes it all, greedily, until you are full inside him as you physically can be. And then his bulge wraps down around, slips its tip inside your nook and _presses,_ and somewhere deep in his body, the very tip of you is sucked and caught and _pulled_ and you don't even have time to think “pail” before your entire self explodes in a coppery heat and you're coming. 

You blink away black spots from your vision, only to loose your mind again as his nook convulses and his bulge milks that spot inside you. He's beyond speech, his mouth open and his head thrown back as you shudder together again and again. It's almost impossible to think through the those crashing breakers of pleasure, but dimly you cling to your feeling that something is strange, weird, off. Pails. Pailing. Something.

Gamzee is not responding to his name, seems to not hear you at all. You pap his face, kiss him, and he just shudders and drags you through another deep wave of pleasure, his fingers digging into your back. You try to pull away but realize you literally can't – his nook is sucking you in so tight you can only hold on, riding him as his shudders slow and gentle and he finally passes out.

You withdraw, exhausted and awed and a little frightened. His bulge slides limply from your body and begins to retract. His smile is small and peaceful. It makes your chest cavity bubble over with tenderness for him. You collapse at his side, brush his hair back from his sweaty face. 

The realization pops to the surface of your mind. No pail, no genetic material anywhere. That is, you could feel yours leaving you, lots of it, but the puddle that's formed under you is barely more than a drip, a slight damp patch smelling of sex. As if that sucking you felt had kept it all deep inside him somehow. 

Gamzee's skin is hot and clammy and he won't wake up. His nook is still open, its puffy pink flesh smeared with too little pearly indigo and brown. There is a hard knot low in his abdomen, just where, you think, the deepest part of his nook must reach. You probe gently at it, trying to feel its shape. He moans, low and rumbling, and there's a burst of that smell that makes you want to- to-

You abscond into the living room, throw open Gamzee's husktop. The timestamp disorients you – it can't have been that long since you tumbled into bed together, can it? Not many people are online at this time of afternoon – most are sleeping or doing chores. Karkat's chumhandle is greyed out but you try it anyway.

\--adiosToreador [AT] started trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]-- 

AT: kARKAT  
AT: kARKAT, uH, i  
AT: gAMZEE, uHH, kIND OF SEEMS LIKE  
AT: tHERE MIGHT BE, uH, sOMETHING WRONG WITH HIM  
AT: lIKE, sOMETHING, uHHH, iDON'T REALLY KNOW HOW SERIOUS  
AT: bUT I THINK I MIGHT HAVE, uH

This is so embarassing. How do you tell someone that you might have broken their moirail with your bulge? Especially someone like Karkat. Gog, he is going to yell at you forever. 

You notice that Aradia's handle has lit up and latch onto that, gratefully. You wish she were just up the cliff in the tower she shares with Sollux and Feferi, not miles away up river at the waterwheel construction site.

\--adiosToreador [AT] started trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]-- 

AT: aRADIA, i tHINK i, uH, BROKE gAMZEE,  
AT: hE'S SLEEPING NOW, BUT, i UH  
AT: hE SEEMS, LIKE HE'S RUNNING A FEVER, AND HE KIND OF REALLY WANTED TO, uH,  
AT: yOU KNOW, pAIL,  
AT: sO i DID, tHAT IS, wE DID, aND, uH, hE PASSED OUT, AND  
AT: iT WASN'T, nORMAL  
AT: oH GOG, kARKAT IS GOING TO,  
AT: fLAY ME ALIVE WITH MY OWN, cHITINOUS  
AT: sOMETHING  
AA: tavros! stop panicking!  
AA: what do you mean it wasn't normal 0_0  
AA: not that i need all the details, but  
AA: um, could you maybe elaborate a little on why you're so upset?  
AT: uHHHHHHHHHHH  
AT: i, uH, i'M NOT SURE HOW TO EXPLAIN IT WITHOUT  
AT: gOING INTO SOME KIND OF DISTRESSING DETAILS  
AA: well, ok, if he's running a fever, shouldn't you get Jane or Fef?

There's a heavy pounding on your door and Karkat's familiar, gravely voice shouting your name. You notice that your other chat window has blown up with his gray all-caps while you weren't paying attention.

“NITRAM! OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT THE FUCK NOW OR I SWEAR ON THE MOST HIGHLY TRAFFICKED OF THE NO-LONGER EXTANT MOTHER GRUB'S DISDENED ORIFICES I WILL KICK IT CLEAN OFF ITS FUCKING HINGES. GAMZEE!! YOU SHAMBLING WASTE, IF I FIND OUT THERE'S BEEN ANY MURDERCLOWNING GOING ON IN THERE SO HELP ME-”

It's only as you throw the door open that you remember you're completely naked. You freeze. Karkat's eyes flicker down your body, then hastily back up. He stares at you like he's trying to make your head explode with the force of his gaze.

“Whoa, what the fuck,” Dave says, next to him. He raises an eyebrow over his shades. 

“Put some gogdamned clothes on,” Karkat spits, shoving you out of the way. He stomps across your front room and into the respite block, lip curled in distaste. 

You scramble for the first fabric-related item you can lay eyes on which happens to be your beach blanket, folded messily and slung over the back of the couch. You wrap it around yourself. The tip of your bulge is still out of its sheath and it quests through the blanket's fringe trying to find an opening. Your blush is so volcanic you think your eyeballs may actually boil in their sockets. 

Dave remains on your doorstep, peering into the gloom of your entry block. He toes your t-shirt inside from where you'd dropped it on the stoop.

“So, is there any murderclowing going on?” he asks. 

You shake your head no. 

“'Kay, I'll just be on my way, then. Got shit to do. You know. Irons. Fires. Egbert's got the forge heating up for me as we speak. So yeah, laters.” 

You nod, unable to even look at him. He leaves, closing the door softly.

You can hear Karkat's voice rising and falling in the other block, fussing. Gamzee makes a few sleepy rumbles. You drift toward the door, your claws fisting in the sandy blanket. 

A sudden hush descends and, into the stillness, you hear your matesprit say your name. 

“Tav?” he calls, his voice breaking over the short vowel.

Your heart picks up until you can almost feel your pulse fluttering in your gills. You peek inside the respite block. 

Your matesprit is kicking his way free of the blankets even as Karkat continues to try to cocoon him in them. Gamzee's pink flush goes all the way down his chest and he's a little wild around the eyes, his hands reaching for you. The smell of his arousal hits you right in the thinkpan, disabling all think-related functions. 

“Tav,” he says, like the bark of a motor, “Need you.” 

You go to him.

*

You may never be able to look Karkat in the face again. Your windows, all of them, are thrown open to the sea breeze but your house still smells faintly of genetic material. Outside, every single sheet, blanket and towel you own hangs drying on your clotheslines. In the past few days you have pailed Gamzee, or not-pailed, since no actual pails were involved, on every single piece of furniture in your house and also on bunch of non-furniture surfaces, like the countertop, the ablution trap and both walls in the narrow hallway. Gog, the hallway. Karkat braved dropping in daily to deliver food and Aradia had flown home from the waterwheel camp to help him. You're not totally sure how much they saw since you were very, um, distracted. Just, it was kind of statistically very likely that if they dropped in it was while you were pailing Gamzee.

Now, a meeting has convened at your house and the committee is standing around awkwardly, trying not to touch anything - except for Rose and Kanaya who are perfectly graceful and poised about it. Them, plus Karkat and Aradia and for some reason John and Jade, too, have all descended on your poor, spunk-fogged house first thing in the evening. For a meeting. About pailing. Or not-pailing.

You're tired and you ache in places you've never hurt before. Your legs are nearly as limp as they were after Vriska jumped you off that cliff, which stirs up some old, illogical fear and anger. You're sprawled on the couch in nothing but pajama pants, letting its padded back support your horns. Gamzee lays with his head in your lap, naked under a sheet and smiling up at you. One huge hand is splayed out over the round, hard, much bigger now bump in his abdomen, petting it absently. The smell of his hair – salt-spray and baking, even after a week away from the kitchens - keeps you calm. 

Finally, Jane knocks and sheepishly sticks her head in the door. 

“Am I the last one here? Sorry, clean-up after dinner got a little out of hand. Equius and Eridan – Well, never mind.”

“I have less than no desire to ever think about those two bulgestains and their oily dishwater blackrom,” Karkat says. “Let's get this shit-show on the road before I start hacking up all the fine mist of genetic material I've inhaled this week.” 

John rolls his eyes and pokes Karkat in the side. Karkat makes a funny, pinched sort of face at him.

Jane perches herself on the edge of the couch by Gamzee's hip. You are glad it's her. She's stable and sensible. She and Gamzee run the kitchen crew together, turning out four meals a day from the huge stove and ovens of First House. The results of their occasional bake-offs leave the whole village in a sugar coma for days.

Jane closes her eyes, her palms sliding lightly over Gamzee's chest and stomach. She frowns, does it again. You're surprised when she moves over to you next, sweeping her hands just above your skin.

“Well, you seem to be all right, Tavros. Just tired. Eat some extra protein and get lots of sleep,” she tells you, smiling kindly. “As for you, Mr. Makara.”

“Lay it on me chef-sis,” Gamzee says, blissful as you'd ever seen him on sopor. Not that he's on sopor, since there is no sopor in this universe. You're glad about that, even when you have nightmares. 

Jane brings her hand over his over the lump. It's taught like a stretched-skin rhythm instrument to the touch. You've touched it a lot, in various states of arousal, confusion, alarm, and uncomfortably growing acceptance.

“If I didn't know better,” Jane says, “Which, I suppose I really don't, since I've never seen anything like this. But, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were pregnant.” 

There is a beat of silence.

Rose says, “Oh my,” at the same time John says “Holy fuck.” Jade lets out a little squeal. 

Beat.

“What's pregnant?” you ask.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose teaches sex ed

You have decided that you hate meetings. You are very confident in that opinion, in fact. Especially when these meeting are about you and/or Gamzee. 

The meeting block of First House is plastered in warm wheat-gold, strewn with pillows and carpets, and lit all over with round paper lamps. Karkat parks the two of you front and center on a generous pile of cushions and barks at you to not fucking go anywhere. And you're enjoying leaning into Gamzee's sweet-smelling side with Aradia tucked up against your other shoulder, but you'd be enjoying it more if everyone weren't staring at you. 

They stared at you both all through the sunset meal – the first meal you'd managed to leave your house for in days - and now you can feel their eyes on you as they arrange themselves around the block.

Dave and Dirk are pointedly not staring at you. They've got Jake sitting so his back is to you, though he keeps glancing over his shoulder. Terezi definitely sniffed the air on her way by you. Roxy and Jane come over to give you both hugs before settling into a blanket pile with Nepeta and Equius. Jade joins them, chatting happily. Feferi, called back from whatever ocean exploration trip she was on, is sprawled all over Sollux, who is propped against the wall, pretending to concentrate on his palmhusk. Eridan hesitates, glancing at you, before flopping down on the floor, midway between Feferi and Roxy. Kankri and Porrim seat themselves in a dignified little cluster at the back of the room. Cronus lounges at Kankri's feet, playing with the hem of his pants. 

John and Kanaya flank Karkat and Rose who are waiting impatiently and tolerantly, respectively, for everyone to settle down. All the others are still away on various trips and will have to be briefed the next time they bother checking in by radio. 

“Settle the fuck down!” Karkat finally shouts. People settle.

“All right, bulgemunches. We have called this meeting to officially warn you – and I hope I can impress the seriousness of this information through your magnificently thick think-pans – about a certain situation. It has come to the attention of the co-friendleaders that one Gamzee Makara, professional waste of space and general clown-themed shitstack has apparently somehow contracted Earth Human Pregnant, no thanks to Nitram or any of the horrorterrors that rule over our collective future reproduction with a perverse and arbitrary tentacle.”

“If I might clarify,” Rose says, “Gamzee is not actually Earth Human Pregnant, being neither female nor human. None of us are fully female or human any longer, as I'm sure you're all well aware. And not in any sort of mental or socially constructed sense. I am speaking in a purely physical sense for purposes of this discussion, Kankri, if I may continue. 

“Our Life, Heart and Blood players all confirm that Mr. Makara is in a delicate state. That is, he is something much like pregnant. So, I thought it would be helpful at this juncture to share what we do know with the group, as well as give a general overview of mammalian reproduction, since that appears to more closely resemble the process by which our new species will reproduce than the Alternian mother grub system. Unless, of course, Gamzee is to be our new mother grub.”

“That's not funny,” you tell her, your voice squeaky and raw. 

She looks at you, inclines her head minutely. “Of course it's not. I apologize.” 

Rose can make her voice very kind when she wants to. She gestures to Kanaya, who steps forward with some large sheets of paper and, oh gog. They have _diagrams._

You already sat through her whole speech on mammalian reproduction earlier this morning. You'd had a hard time getting to sleep afterward, unable to shake the mental image of a live wiggler thrashing inside your body. Thankfully, Gamzee had come back from Karkat's place and cuddled you until you'd managed a nap.

The others seem to be taking it about as well as you had. In fact, the only ones not blanched peaky or green about the gills are the former female humans and Nepeta for some reason. Gamzee is wrapped around you with his cheek against your hair. You can't see his face, but from the rhythm of his breathing you think he might be asleep.

When Rose asks if there are any questions, the silence is thick enough to smother someone with.

“So!” she says, plowing on with a serene smile. “Here's what we know about Gamzee's situation,

“One: In the hours leading up to his impregnation, he experienced a surge of flushed feelings and concupiscent desires, leading to a loss of self-control and some degree of depersonalization. This could be interpreted as similar to the mating heats observed in some Earth animal species. This condition persisted in varying states of intensity for approximately five days.

“Two: Upon exposure to Gamzee in this state, his matesprit was similarly affected, possibly due to pheromones or his empathic sensitivity,

“Three: While pailing in this state, Gamzee's body involuntarily retained a quantity of genetic material,

“Four: This genetic material is now undergoing some kind of gestational process, the end result of which presumably will be the production of offspring. We have no idea how long this gestational period will last. It has been less than a week and the size of his, I believe the colloquialism is 'baby bump,' is approximately that of a human at one third the way through their gestational cycle.

“Five: Since several other individuals have managed to pail each other without showing any of these symptoms, one might assume that the heat is related to the physiological changes that allow for genetic material retention and gestation. However, this may not be the case. Said individuals might have just gotten lucky.

“Six: We have no idea what the trigger might be for the heat cycle and accompanying physiological changes. 

“Seven: Since Gamzee is nominally male, we must assume that mammalian gender differences do not apply.”

“What miss incomprehensibly-wordy-fangs is trying to say here,” Karkat says, griding the words between his teeth, “Is that this could happen to you, nooksniffers. None of us is immune to this threat. And we might not even feel it coming.”

Uneasy shuffling. 

“I know what we need!” Roxy exclaims, “Wine!” She produces some bottles from her blanket pile, tears the stopper out of one with her teeth, and takes a long swig. She passes it to Equius, who takes it gingerly.

“Might his position on the hemospectrum-” Equius starts.

“Dude. There is no more hemospectrum,” John says, forcefully. 

“Hrk. Yes, I'm well aware. However, as he is the highest... color... among the land-dwellers-”

“In case you hadn't noticed, we're all a little fishy up in these parts,” Dave points out.

“All right, but we are still rainbowy, kind of!” Nepeta says, papping at Equius until he subsides. “Um, I guess that maybe possibly could make a diffurence?”

“I suppose we'll have to find more accurate term than hemospectrum, since our blood is now uniform,” Rose muses, “However-”

“Since the only difference is now the color of your junk -. Peenospectrum. You're welcome.” Dave says.

John is the only one who snickers. You gulp a burning swallow from a wine bottle and feel a bit better as it warms your stomach. Jane snatches it away as you attempt to pass it to Gamzee.

 _“However,”_ Rose says, “In this case I must repeat, there was no readily apparent cause for the heat. And since Gamzee's ancestor-descendant is not present, we don't know whether the most genetically similar individuals were effected at the same time. I suppose once we find out Kurloz's status, we might begin to unravel whether the trigger was genetic or environmental.” 

John bounces forward, “What we're really trying to say, guys, is you should know about this! We don't want anyone to get all freaked out and not know what was happening to them! So, take care of yourselves, and each other. Please know you can come talk to any of us friendleaders any time, and go to Jane or Feferi with any medical questions.”

He grins out over you all, his prominent front fangs catching the lamplight. His horns are curling and backswept almost like a Breath symbol. He asks if you and Gamzee have anything you want to say. Gamzee squeezes your hand and levers himself up out of the pile. He unfolds himself to full height and lets everyone stare at his - ugh - baby bump with a serene smile.

“Brothers and sisters,” he says, “You know I ain't religious anymore, but this? Is a straight up miracle up in here. Tav and I are gonna have ourselves a wicked bitchtits little grub, and we want you all to get your happiness on for us.”

“Why the fuck did we even ask you?” Karkat says, facepalming. “There was absolutely nothing revelatory about that speech in any way.”

“No need to get your harsh on, palebro. There's so much love up in this place it was only a matter of time before we up and started making little ones anyway. Since that's all what the kind of folks we are now, am I right?”

“Oh gog, every time I think you couldn't get any more depraved, you flabbergast me yet a-fucking-gain. Sit down, fuckpole, you're in a delicate state.”

This seems to be the cue for the meeting to break up. Your friends begin to talk amongst themselves. 

Gamzee drags Karkat down into your pile, pulling the palhoncho tight against his side. You let him pull you in to his other side, careful of your horns. Aradia curls against your back. All three of your hands creep onto the baby bump simultaneously and Gamzee's huge paw comes down on top of them, pinning them in place. That sets Aradia off giggling, while Karkat stares at Gamzee's distended stomach, looking lost.

“Can't you, like, use your time shit to give us some tiny shred of a fucking clue?” Karkat asks her.

“I can tell you that this life stretches forward into the future, and so do all of ours,” she says. “You'll have to ask Sollux if you want a more exact answer.”

“Fuck that nookwaffleing douchemonger,” Karkat mumbles, his face pressed into Gamzee's side. “And stop petting my hair, you PDA-obsessed, womb-riddled bulgesore.”

Gamzee continues petting his hair, chuckling or purring deep in his voicebox. “Shh, best friend,” he says, “I up and got this one all instinctual-like.”

“What are we even going to do with a grub? We don't have any lusii, unless one magically prances out of the fucking forest just as this thing bursts from your slime-drenched loins in a spray of gore.”

“Shut up, Karkat.”

Wow, did a statement of that nature, really just come from your mouth with that degree of forceful delivery? Yes, it did. Karkat eyes you and closes his mouth without replying. Aradia gives you a little squeeze. 

“Hey man,” Dirk says, “I just wanted to say congratulations.” He crouches and proffers his fist for bumpage. Bump it you do, disconcerted. Dirk is like all the most terrifying parts of Dave and Rose mashed up with a side of Equius. You've never known quite what to make of him, or when he was being serious. 

“And I hope you'll jolly well accept a similar accolade from myself!” Jake says. He is also pretty incomprehensible, and not just the way he talks. He shakes your hand, moderating his grip to only mildly crushing when he sees you wince. “Since this little conference seems to be adjourned, we're off home. A hard night's work lies ahead!”

“Nah, he just got all hot and bothered by the part about insect reproduction. Wants to take me home and oviposit my fine ass, without so much as a ring on my maidenly finger.”

Jake flushes, pink against his green-black hair. “That would hardly be sporting of me, would it, chum?”

“Ooh, Mr English. I do believe my bosom might be in danger of heaving. The explosive decompression of my bodice is surely immanent.”

“Okay, you're dismissed already. Insufferable douchecopters one and two cleared for takeoff. Please explosively decompress your carcasses to some distant location, where sane and decent individuals don't have to listen to your grotesque ironic foreplay.”

“Thanks motherfuckers,” Gamzee says, waving lazily.

Aradia giggles into your hair. “The two of them crack me up every time,” she whispers.

You're not sure which two she means.

*

Gamzee wants to get back to the kitchens that night, so you go with him to prep the midnight meal. You sit around peeling and chopping things he slides in front of you, watching the way he navigates the counters and stove. He's a little bit awkward, careful, but light enough on his feet. He slings a few rhymes at you and you sling some back. His usual baggy t-shirt and apron fit fine over his altered figure. The pajama pants he's got on are tied much too low and keep slipping down off his narrow hips. 

Daylight on this planet doesn't burn you, but you're still more comfortable on a mostly-nocturnal schedule. Four moons light the sky and the stars have no pattern you remember, but the night breeze is calming and familiar. Most of the former-humans prefer to be awake during the day and some people, like Jade, don't seem to keep any set schedule, sleeping whenever they're tired and working or playing when they're not. Sunrise and sunset are the gathering times, when the two largest meals are served and meetings, announcements or parties take place. The midnight and noon meals are more casual, a spread of easily portable snacks for people to grab between projects. There are always a lot of projects going on. 

You hate to imagine what the village might be like if Rose and Jane hadn't alchemized all the team's grist into raw materials before everyone was ejected into the new universe. You'd woken up as if startled from sleep, alone on a bare hilltop, the sound of whooping cheers and laughter echoing in the distance. The Door that the living players had come through had closed and disappeared without a trace. It quickly became apparent that sylladexes, alchemiters and other game constructs were no longer things that worked, though your game-powers had been sort of combined with your original psychic powers. It had been a lot of work to haul all the tools, stores and scrapped totem lathes down out of the hills to the village site. You're still not sure if Jane was crazy or brilliant for making so much sugar and flour. Her careful rationing had stretched it through the seemingly endless weeks of winter. The site of the Door was now marked only with a single standing slab of stone, courtesy of Damara. 

Roxy stops by to see if you're up for the weekly fishing trip, but you aren't ready to leave Gamzee's side for that long yet. Instead, you wash dishes. When Jane turns up to help with the dawn meal, she finds you and Gamzee soaked to the skin, standing in a big soapy puddle, making out.

She breaks it up and settles Gamzee with tea and more prepwork. She thrusts a mop into your hands, then kicks you out of the kitchen as soon as you've gotten most of the water up. 

“Go take some time for yourself,” she tells you. “He'll be fine with me for a little while.”

At loose ends, you wander out of First House down toward the gardens. Rows of young plants wait for the sunlight gathering at the rim of the ocean. You put in a lot of hours building barriers to keep them safe from the local fauna.

You aren't surprised to find Jade there, feet swinging from the edge of a terrace, her hair lifting in the faint morning breeze.

“Hey, proud papa!” she says, patting the ground beside her. 

“Please don't call me that,” you tell her. It reminds you too much of Vriska.

“Sure thing, fuckass. Where's your man-mama at?”

“Gamzee's in the kitchens with Jane. She, uh, told me I should go have some me-time.”

“Haha, she's such a tightass. But she's probably right. Gamzee will be fine, you know. It's not like he's sick or hurt or something, just pregnant.”

In a way, you can't help thinking of him as injured, parasitized. You squint down the valley toward the swollen bay, trying to rearrange your feelings. It doesn't really work.

“Did you know,” Jade asks, pointing, “That all those blue lines on the big moon are actually crevasses? The whole thing is covered in a shell of ice, like a big continuous glacier! That big dark stripe around the middle might even be open ocean. This should really be considered a binary planet system with three moons.” 

She gestures at the two other moons still visible, the pink Wanderer and greyish-white Peregrine, both far smaller than the Big moon.

“Do you want to go visit it?” you ask her.

“Well, duh! It would be dangerous, we'd have to do a lot of research to make sure we had the right gear. Plus, I'm not sure what my range is anymore for teleporting things. I'd have to make some hops in hard vacuum, so that's a whole other engineering challenge. And then who knows what the atmospheric composition would be once we got there! We'd definitely have to take you or John and one of the Void players...”

You let her words wash over you for a while as she rambles about exploring the Big moon, coming around eventually to more mundane things – curing hides with Nepeta, improvements she wants to make to her irrigation system. The sun slides up over the horizon, washing out the sky. 

“You ready to tell me what's bothering you now?” she asks you.

“Just, uh, the kind of stuff you might expect. With Gamzee. And me not having any idea how to be a lusus, or a, uh, I guess, parent, or anything like that.”

“Well,” she says, frowning, “I was raised by a dog, so it's not like I know anything about it either.” 

Your fault. You know she doesn't hate you, but she'll never really forgive you either. You don't expect her to.

“I guess, not many of us had, uh, parents at all. Just Jane and John. And Rose. And Dave, sort of.”

“Dave's Bro wasn't like parents usually are, from what he's told me. Just try to imagine Dirk with a baby, 'nuff said. And I'm still not sure what families were like on Beforus. The only one who wants to talk about it is Kankri, and bluh! Forget that!” 

The sunrise is warm on your face. You let your mind thin out and commune with the sky, feeling out the extent of the dry, warm pocket of air parked over the village. 

“It's going to be a hot one today,” you tell Jade. “But maybe rain tomorrow night.” 

“Good to know!” she says, ruffling your mohawk. “You come in handy a lot, Horns. Now I'm fucking starved, let's go get breakfast!”

*

You worry more when you're away from Gamzee than when you're with him. Jane keeps kicking you out of the kitchens so you throw yourself into helping Jade and Kanaya weed, tending the honey bees with Sollux and measuring star positions and tide heights with Aradia. When you're alone too long, your thoughts snarl up in flashbacks of those diagrams and memories of the few animals births you've helped with, all blood and pain and torn flesh. 

Gamzee seems so serene. He lets Karkat fuss over him with his usual indolent grace. You try not to touch him like he's fragile or infirm because you know how much that can cut. You know the more you think about feelings, the harder they seem, so you try to push yours aside and be confident. You tell yourself you're getting used to things slowly. 

Sometimes, though, he just sits on your porch with his big hand spread on his stomach and looks blankly out at the water. That distance, the inward-focus that pulls him unreachably far away is what scares you the most.

Eventually, you can't stand it anymore and you tell him. 

“I don't want you to, go away from me. Even if it's into your own head. It's not allowed. I'll go in after you and drag you back.”

“I know you would, Tav,” he says. He taps his temple, close to where his scars begin, “There's enough of me up in here, now, that I can sort out what's what from these urges. This is my chance to bring something other than death and motherfucking sopor pies to the table, you dig?” 

He tries to smile for you as he searches your face. It's hard for you to imagine him as a killer, unless you think of your glimpse of him on Jane's planet, the dead blankness in his eyes. You touch his cheek, close to where his scars end. 

“You already bring stuff other than those things you mentioned. But I dig. Flushed for you, Gamzee.” 

“Flushed for you, my best motherfucker. Now what say you and I settle in for a good day's nap. I'm in a delicate motherfucking state over here.” 

“You are not,” you tell him, annoyed. “You've been the strongest of anyone through this whole thing.”

He looks surprised, then pleased. 

“If any motherfucking thing ever was a miracle, it's you, best beloved. You and me and this little one, no further miracles necessary. Come here.”

It always takes some sorting to arrange all your horns and limbs, pillows and various blankets around the weight of Gamzee's stomach. But, together, you manage it and then you sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamzee and Tavros receive a visitor

Sollux knocks very late in the afternoon, just as you're getting ready to leave for the night. Gamzee's due at the kitchens for evening meal pretty soon, and you're planning to take a long walk back up the valley to check on the local wildlife. You're getting to know this planet's animals pretty well, and you have some ideas about which species might be helpful to domesticate. It's one of your longterm projects.

Sollux is wrapped in a hooded cloak, though the heat of the day is lingering. It kind of looks like he's carrying something underneath it. He's not wearing his glasses and he's got puffy bags under his mismatched eyes.

“Best friend's best friend!” Gamzee says, “What can we up and do for a motherfucker?”

His lips twist into a tight line. He brushes by without touching either of you.

“Close the door,” he says. 

You do.

He lifts one side of his cloak open, revealing his pale, gold-sheened skin. 

His stomach is _huge._

“Aradia?” you ask, when you manage to get your slack jaw under control. You thought Aradia was back at the waterwheel camp, though their internet connection has been down again and you haven't heard from her. It wasn't that unusual to not see Sollux around. He's one of the no-set-schedule crowd and spends most of his time holed up in his tower, working on electronics. 

Sollux nods. “I had to call her back as soon as she made it up river. She's sleeping.”

“Poor motherfucker,” Gamzee murmurs, “You musta been hard up waiting for her to flit all the way home to you.” 

Sollux blushes. He lowers himself onto your couch, his eyes crackling a little as he uses his psionics to support his weight. 

“Fef was there and, well. She may have. Um. Helped.”

Your eyebrows ratchet even higher. “I thought you two were pale!”

“We are so pale you don't even know. Except when we're not.” He gives you a sulky, defiant glare. “Gog, it was fucking stupid of me to come talk to you two about this. You're practically Earth Human Married or whatever. I should have known you would get all weird and judgmental.”

Gamzee folds himself down onto the other end of the couch. “This ain't no thing we'd get our judge on over, my brother. You got some beautiful feels for fishsis and some beautiful feels for Tav's palesis. No shame in that.” 

Sollux looks small, shoulders hunched over the curve of his stomach. He frowns at Gamzee, who smiles back easily. You prop yourself on the edge of the table, trying not to stare. Gog, he's huge. As big as Gamzee, and Gamzee's stomach has been growing for a couple weeks now.

Sollux shakes himself a little bit, rolling his shoulders. “Look.” He says, “I'll get to the fucking point already and stop wasting your time. It's just... how do I tell Karkat?” 

That isn't really what you were expecting to hear.

“Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but, isn't Karkat always asking you if you're still friends? That kind of makes it seem like you're pretty important to him. Uh. At least to me. So, uh, what exactly is the problem with telling him?”

Sollux flushes miserably and picks at his cloak. 

“You got some beautiful feels for my palebro, too?” Gamzee asks, gently. 

“Argh! No! Well, ok, maybe, not that I would characterize them as beautiful in any way. Annoyingly persistent maybe. But that asshole is totally hung up on Troll Serendipity, even though he's so red and black and pale all over he doesn't know what the fuck he wants from anyone. And then he's got John, Terezi and Dave locked in his fucked-up-rationalization-of-the-week quadrant-swap clusterfuck. Did you know that they have a _schedule?_ Posted right outside their ablution block? It's in Karkat's handwriting.”

You've seen it. You try not to look at it or think about it ever. 

Gamzee chuckles. “Palebro's always complaining how people don't up and respect all his schedule shit. He just gets in his own way all the motherfucking time, don't he?”

“I would really look like a pathetic, hypocritical jerk if I got all upset over Karkat and his asshat schedule fuckery, right?” Sollux rants, “I mean, did I not just come out and admit my own quadrant hopping shenanigans like two seconds ago? But he's gonnna come down so hard on me for getting knocked up by two people, and like, neither of them is a kismesis. Gog, is that going to be a thing now? Are we all going to have to get love-hate double reacharound pregnant to satisfy that bulgestain?”

“I don't know if, uh, that's actually how getting pregnant works,” you say. “Also, quadrants are kind of not a thing that has anything to do with pregnancy, at least originally, and furthermore are not a thing that will get you culled anymore, so at least there's uh, that. But as your matesprit's moirail, I feel kind of like I should ask whether you've talked about any of this with her.”

Sollux gives you a stricken look. “Of course I talked about it with Aradia,” he says. “She was glad Fef was there for me when I needed her. And whenever Karkat comes up she gets that cute mysterious smile and is all 'follow your heart, Sollux!' Besides, in case it wasn't totally crystal clear to you chumps, I'm mostly pretty black for him. So, I really shouldn't feel like such a huge dick, here, right?” 

You don't totally get it, but you know he makes Aradia happy so it must be ok. You nod. 

“There ain't so many of us left that there can be meant to bes for everyone, Solbro.” Gamzee says. “Maybe quadrants is just feelings now. Maybe that's better.”

“Not that feelings are necessarily all that easy,” you add.

It's weird to see Sollux without his glasses. It makes him seem very young and very nervous, his eyes flicking back and forth between you. 

“I seriously can't believe you two are going to be lusii,” he says, finally. “I can't believe I'm going to be either. Shit. I should go.” 

“Have you had Jane or someone look you over?” you ask him. “You seem really, like, well. Huge.”

“Fef did. She said she'll stay with me the whole time. Aradia will be around a while, too. Uh, sorry we didn't tell you sooner. It kind of just happened.” 

Oh. You guess maybe you should be upset that you weren't around to help your moirail during her time of uh, need. But then again, you can kind of understand how it might have slipped her mind. You'll go up and visit her later. Maybe you'll find her some of the mushrooms she likes while you're on your walk.

Sollux grumps at you a little more, then wraps his cloak around himself and lifts himself straight up the cliff, bypassing the village. You hope he's going to go back to sleep and not sit up all night programming.

“Is this going to be a thing now, where everyone thinks we'll know the right thing to tell them about being pregnant?” you ask.

“I don't think we did so bad,” Gamzee shrugs. 

*

It is a very warm bright season, the Big moon high and full at night, the sun powerful. Even First House is stuffy inside, so Gamzee and Jane serve the sunrise meal on blankets on the lawn. 

Sollux saunters up to the gathering crowd with head held high, his matesprit and moirail on his arms. He's obviously borrowed clothes from someone not so rail-thin. From the colors and the faded grass stains, you think they're Jake's. The yelling turns out to be pretty spectacular, though Feferi breaks it up before Sollux and Karkat get too up in each others' faces. Just a few minutes later they're practically snuggled up on a blanket, Karkat plying Sollux with way too much food. If the two of them really are black, it will be the snarkiest, most apologetic kismesissitude ever, you think. Either that, or Karkat taking care of pregnant people is going to become a thing. It kind of wouldn't surprise you, somehow. 

Aradia sits with you, looking tired and glowy. You rub her shoulders a little bit and fuss with her hair - not too much, you are in public, after all. You get her to tell you about progress with the waterwheel thing and how she and Damara are doing with their calendar project. Damara is camped out on some mountain, where she's built herself an observatory. They've been observing the stars since you arrived on this planet, and have determined that it's been nearly a full solar sweep, now. Sweeps here are shorter than on Alternia, but longer than on Earth. Aradia puzzles gloomily about how the moon-cycles seem to match up suspiciously exactly with the solar cycles. You're not totally sure why that would be alarming. It seems pretty convenient and orderly to you. 

When Kanaya arrives, she makes a beeline for Sollux, pulling a measuring tape from some hidden pocket of her skirt. Though Gamzee hasn't gotten too big for the oversized t-shirts he lives in, he has flat refused to wear pants for the past week. Instead, he'd gone around kilted in various lengths of fabric until Kanaya caught him at it and forced him into a flowing wrap-skirt. His endless legs flash in the gap when he walks and it drives you a little bit crazy. You assure Aradia that she'll fix Sollux up with something nice.

You pretend to yourself that there won't be yet another meeting about pregnancy starting up any second now. No meetings, only hanging out and eating and talking and laughing. The dawn light makes burgundy highlights on the fine, mammalian hairs on Aradia's arm and coppery ones on yours. You have all become strange creatures, but at least you've done it together.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> News comes on the Breeze; Kankri gets a talking-to; Equius gets first aid; Dirk waxes philosophical

You and John are working on a windmill when he jerks up straight so suddenly he nearly slides off his ladder. A gust of air corrects his balance. 

“Do you hear that, Tav?” he asks, head cocked.

You don't. You let your mind spin out into the air, over the village, through the trees. You can feel the warm disturbance of each breathing thing in the valley, but any sounds they might make are uninterpretable to you. Nothing really feels amiss. 

“No,” you tell John, “What is it?”

“It kind of sounds like Jake,” John says, his face scrunched in concentration. “He's all the way up at the waterwheel camp, right? He's yelling, or... whimpering? I think maybe he's hurt.”

You fumble through your pockets for the weight of your PDA. Aradia and Dirk are both online but idle, which means their network is up. Their system has been working much more reliably since Dirk went up the river. You leave Aradia a message, asking her to check on Jake and let you know the situation. After a moment's hesitation, you leave a few lines for Dirk, too. He's a little terrifying but, you think, he'd be much more terrifying if you didn't let him know about his matesprit's potential peril. 

“Do you think you'd be able to listen to Aradia answer if I ask her something?” you ask John. 

“My range is nowhere near big enough to reach the camp, dude. The breeze just brings me things without asking sometimes. Can't control it.” He bounces a little, making you irrationally nervous about the ladder again. “Can you really reach that far? That's, like, a whole bunch of miles! Pretty amazing, Tavros! Anyway, I guess I'd better tell Karkat. You could go find Kanaya – I bet she could help you talk to someone up there.”

You think your powers can reach all the way to the waterwheel camp, but you're not totally sure. Aradia always seems to intuit when you'll need her without you having to contact her that way. You guess it's a Time thing, like how Dave always seems to turn up where and when he's most needed.

You climb down from the windmill carefully. John simply steps backwards onto thin air and flies off toward First House, calling Karkat's name.

You think Kanaya was supposed to be helping in the gardens today, so you head in that direction. You find Jade instead. 

“Hey, Tavros!” she says. “I was just working with Equius on one of the pumps and he got this really weird look on his face, went all sweaty and ran off. I mean, I guess he just does that sometimes, but it seemed kind of odd, you know?” 

“I, uh, don't have any explanation for that, I don't think. Have you seen Kanaya around? Or, can you maybe help me get a message to the waterwheel camp somehow? John heard something in the breeze and now he thinks Jake's in trouble.” 

Jade's mouth and eyes go very round. “Oh, fuck! No, I haven't seen Kanaya anywhere. And I can only throw things as far as the waterwheel camp if there's someone there who can catch them. Otherwise they kind of tend to leave a crater! Did he say what kind of trouble?”

“He said he heard Jake yelling and thought he was hurt. I messaged Dirk and Aradia already, but they're both idle.”

“Well, maybe they have the situation under control already,” Jade suggests. “You know how Dirk is. Anyway, let me think. Porrim is still somewhere around the village, right? I wouldn't want to throw to Aradia unless she expected it, so that doesn't help. Maybe Sollux?”

“Hey!” you hear, from above. John is hovering above you, hair fluttering from his abrupt stop. “Karkat said to come find him at the Dorms. I'm going to go get Sollux to raise them on the radio!”

He tears off in a great gust of wind. You're definitely still a little jealous that he can fly. You've only managed to support your own weight with Breath once, that time you fell off the greenhouse roof. It had been completely uncontrolled, a panic reaction, over as soon as your feet touched the ground.

“Fuckass must be worried if he took it to Fuckass Senior.” Jade says. “Come on! Let's go catch the show!”

Karkat is in fact in Kankri's room, sitting with him on his scattering of red pillows. They look up from their borderline-argument when you knock on the door frame.

“Hey!” Jade says, “I brought you Tavros! What's the big fucking deal?”

“Tavros, is it true your range extends all the way up to waterwheel camp?” Kankri asks, politely. 

You nod a little. “That is, I can, uh, sense Breath that far. I've never tried to actually commune with it over that distance before.”

Karkat's eyebrows are doing a twisty little dance of surprise. His expression is maybe even a little bit impressed under his annoyance.

“Great of you to just keep that to yourself all this time!” he says. “Could you maybe make your pathetic self useful and tell those greasy fuckheads to get on the fucking radio?”

“Rude!” Jade says. 

You're actually a little embarrassed you didn't think of that yourself. You settle cross-legged into the cushions and start to deepen your breathing. “I'll try.”

You have to go very deep to spin yourself out as far as the waterwheel camp. Your body sags somewhere at the receding edge of your awareness. The terrain is harder to picture the further you get – the camp is a full night's walk up the river, and you've never been there yourself. Eventually, there is only the open channel of air over the river, warm eddies of treebeasts and fleetbeasts, the flow of wind along the warp of pressure gradients. The camp is a sort of confused mass of activity, but Aradia's Breath is familiar as a beacon. 

'Is everyone OK there?' you whisper. 'John thinks Jake might be hurt. Please check in somehow.'

You return slowly, and find your head cushioned in Jade's lap. She is idly poking at the tip of one horn, then watching the dents in the pad of her finger disappear. 

A chime comes from your PDA and you jump fully awake.

\--apocalypseArisen [AA] started trolling adiosToreador [AT]-- 

AA: it's ok Tavros, he's not hurt  
AA: he's just in heat  
AA: Dirk is very on top of the situation  
AA: gosh, I didn't realize the breeze was such a perv  
AA: though it would not really surprise me if you could hear them all the way down there  
AA: maybe i should fly down and get Roxy and Jane? they're the moirails, right?

You show the message to Karkat, who says, “Oh my shitfrollicking, blisterbulged gog,” and hands it off to Kankri.

“I suppose I agree with the spirit of your assessment, if not your vocabulary preferences,” Kankri says. “But, Jade, you are the most similar genetically to Jake, is that right? Have you experienced any unusual, ah, symptoms?”

“Nope!” Jade says, helping you sit up. “My nook is dry as a fucking desert over here.” 

You're pretty sure, from the way she giggles, that she said that just to see the look on their faces. They do have a pretty funny facial expression, you think, and also eerily similar.

There is a light knock and Gamzee leans his massive horns and indigo-black mop of hair through the doorway.

“Hey, my righteous motherfuckers. All the people I wanted to see all up in once place,” he says. “Palebro, I got a concern what I need to lay on you.”

“What now?” Karkat sighs.

“Well, it's fishbro the elder. He wandered by the kitchen looking real rough around the edges, so I got him to motherfucking sit down and take a minute. Us two tuneful motherfuckers like to up and get our musical discussion on every now and then, you dig? But my bardbro was kind of leaking these feels everywhere and then I noticed how he smelled. So I up and suggested he might want to get his privacy on and helped him back to his place. Anyway, point being, our Bard of motherfucking Hope appears to be in heat, like. Figured you might want to know.” 

Karkat looks almost proud, in a constipated sort of way. “Sometimes you really come through when I least expect it, you dribbling clownbulge.”

“Motherfucker is asking for you,” Gamzee says, making large, solemn eyes at Kankri. 

Kankri sort of blushes and blanches at the same time, his face going pale around two pink spots on his cheeks. He glances around at you, Jade and Karkat, then gives himself a little shake.

“It seems to be the pattern that the moirail's duty is to give aid and comfort during the... process,” he says. “I suppose I will just have to hope I don't find it too triggering.”

“Um,” you say. “I don't know that that is what he's, uh, asking for you for. And, um, well. If you're not really pale for him, uh. You may not be able to help yourself.”

The look Kankri gives you is completely withering. 

“I would have thought,” he states, delicately, “That I'd made my position re: concupiscent feelings entirely clear to one and all. But if you require additional explanation, I'll have to ask that you refrain from any such accusations, implications, pointed rhetorical questions or other microaggressions, intentional or unintentional, until we've set some ground rules for-”

“Oh my gog, shut up you miserable nookchaffing sack of rhetoric!” Karkat bursts out. “Everyone has seen you make out with him. The two of you are all over each other practically the second you get in the same room with alcohol.”

“I hardly think that a few inebriated explorations-”

“No, you hardly think you need to shut your hoofbeastshit-spewing windflap and listen when people talk but that is what you're going to do right now.

“You're the fucking Seer of Blood, and the thing is, much as it pains me to admit this, you're actually pretty good at it. All of your pan-rotting consensus process and the stupid weekly meetings everyone hates – they actually work. You bullied us into making them work, and they're not exactly like you'd pictured but they make this place run with, so far, no bloodshed. You're great at divvying up chores and assigning teams, and you're actually a decent auspistice, even though people mostly just stop arguing so you'll stop fucking lecturing them. I even came over here to consult you on this whole mess, a consultation which you are now making me regret with the intensity of the Green fucking Sun.

“That's why it astounds me, just fucking flabbergasts me so bad I have literally no words for my dismay, that you are so utterly fucking clueless about your own fucked up feelings. Get your head out of your oversensitive nook and stop jerking him around!”

“I'm not! I just feel, given his issues with over- and under- identification, as well as various social conventions and power structures, a pale relationship is-”

“The two of you are the worst moirails in history. You're even more of a mockery to moirallegience than the eight way pale clusterfuck that Egbert calls his Earth Human BFFamily or my diamond with that asshole over there.”

“Hey, now,” Gamzee says.

“And, here's a thought,” Karkat plows on, “Maybe if you and Cronus stopped encouraging each other to be such complete douchelords, you'd have some other prospects! It's almost like you want no one else to like him, so he'll have to focus all that creepy ass attention on you! And then you just keep him at arm's length forever, maybe make out with him once in a while just to keep him hooked, then shove him away again. It would be sort of disgustingly cruel if he weren't such a horrible, unforgivable asshole himself.”

Kankri looks as if he's been slapped across the face. He opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again.

“I-” Kankri says. “I don't really know-”

“Well, figure it the fuck out!”

“Might want to hurry it up a little, though,” Gamzee adds. “He wasn't looking too comfortable last I saw him.”

Kankri kind of looks like he might be sick. “What – what's going to happen to him if no one-”

“We don't, uh, actually know,” you say, quietly. “No one's heard from Kurloz in weeks, and Mituna's been out of contact for even longer. They're the only other ones who might have-”

Kankri makes a little noise of distress in his throat. Gamzee steps away from the door, lets him bolt.

Karkat lets out a long breath. “Well that was about as much fun as cleaning out my seedflap with a rusty sickle.”

“Do you think it might have, uh, helped?” you ask.

“Looked like he went toward bard-bro's place,” Gamzee says, “Guess he might have absconded, though.” 

“What the actual fuck do I think I'm doing. Guys, you just let me wade right into that mess and make an abject tool of myself.”

“No way, fuckass, you were awesome,” Jade tells him, slapping him hard on the back. “I can't wait to go tell Nepeta!” And then she scurries out the door and is gone.

The three of you shuffle out of Kankri's little room and find yourselves standing awkwardly in the grassy alley outside. Gamzee grabs both of you by the shoulders and pulls you in against him until you relax into his side. 

After a moment you say, “Do you think we maybe should go check on them? And Eridan, too, I guess?” 

“Ugh,” Karkat moans, turning his face into Gamzee's chest. “Should, probably. Want to? Fucking no forever.” 

But he peels himself free of Gamzee and pulls his determined leader expression on like armor. 

“Come on.” 

*

By unspoken consensus, you avoid Cronus's room and go looking for Eridan. Instead you find Roxy hurrying up the path from her cottage, looking a little shell shocked. 

She sizes you up, then says. “All three of you better come. Come on.”

Equius is looming over Jane in her cottage's snug living room. She is dabbing a cloth on the numerous, deep scratches which score his back, shoulders and arms. His lip is bloody and his dark glasses seem to be missing. 

When he sees Gamzee he freezes. Sweat breaks out on his skin and he flinches. Jane paps him on the thigh and tells him to hold still. She barely spares a glance at the rest of you, involved in her ministrations. Gamzee's face goes still. He makes as if to duck out the door again. 

“Wait, h- No, Makara,” Equius says. He glances unsubtly at Gamzee's stomach. “Stay, if you wish.”

Karkat sighs, “All right. Tell us what the fuck happened. And for the love of whatever gossamer threads my sanity hangs by, do it in as few fucking words as possible.” 

Equius seems to weigh this command, then says, “Eridan.” 

“Did you, uh, do it, with him?” you squeak. “Uh. I mean. Um. You don't have to answer that.”

Equius and Karkat eye you like the answer should be obvious. Roxy laughs and crushes the breath out of you in a twiggy-limbed hug. 

“You're the best, Tav. Don't ever let anyone tell you you're not,” she says.

“Fuck,” Karkat says, rolling the word around his mouth as if savoring it. “So. Heat plus blackrom. I guess, for the sake of science, peacekeeping and absolutely no prurient interest whatsoever fuck you very much, I have to ask how that went.”

Equius frowns. “He was unusually, if not unduly forceful. But. At a certain point it was... not black.” He hunches his shoulders. “It was not really like anything I can explain easily. Then, after, he pushed me off his houseboat and ordered me to swim to shore. I'm afraid the rowboat is still out there.” 

“I don't want you going back there until Eridan has himself under control,” Jane nearly snarls.

There is a shocked silence. Jane blushes very pink. She ducks her head over Equius's hand, cleaning a cut between his fingers carefully, then sealing it with a faintly blue-glowing trace of her finger. 

“Ohmigawd Janey, you're too fucking cute,” Roxy says. “But you realize, right, getting in between them would be like an ash-mediation-whatsis.”

“Ashen solicitation,” Karkat sighs, “And yeah, it's exactly like that.”

Equius places his other hand carefully on Jane's. “Is that how you feel about us?” he asks.

She looks up at him, her eyes startlingly pale in the dim room. “I don't really understand how to feel that way. The idea that it would somehow be romantic to have to keep breaking up your fights - that is very strange and unappealing by human standards. But I care about you. I don't want to see you hurt each other.”

“This type of behavior is normal for a kismesissitude, both the violence and the concupiscent aspects. Only my moirail or an auspistice would normally offer me first aid.”

“And would your kismesis normally bear your child? No! It, it just strikes me as, well, messed up! Parents aren't supposed to hate each other!” 

Jane's hands are small and plump and lost in Equius's careful grasp. Her face is crumpled in a teary sort of anger. Roxy sidles up to them and slips an arm around her. Jane leans her head against Roxy's shoulder. 

“I'll go and check on Eridan,” Roxy volunteers, “I can swim out there and get the boat, at least, even if he doesn't want to see me.”

“I would be grateful,” Equius says. “He made it quite clear that I would not be welcome back.”

“Roxy are you sure you'll be alright?” Jane asks. 

“Void player, remember? He won't even know I'm there if I don't want him to. I am ninja,” Roxy says. “Anyway, I think I'm pale enough for him that I'll be ok. I'm like his partner in crime, haircare and snarky complaining. That's what moirialdom is all about, right?”

Karkat sighs like he's about to go into another 'humans are palesluts' rant. You cut him off.

“What about Dirk and Jake?” you ask.

“Dirk's like my brother,” Roxy tells you. “Actually, he is my brother. That's always weird to remember!” 

“An ideal human sibling relationship is close to how I understand pale affection works,” Jane explains glumly. “And on Earth it was pretty normal to have more than one brother or sister or even a whole circle of equally close friends.”

“I wouldn't say Eridan's like my brother, exactly. More like my BFF in fabulousness! I don't really mind being his agony aunt, either.”

“You're everyone's agony aunt,” Jane says. “Also a general instigator and bad influence.”

Roxy grins like that's the best compliment she's ever gotten and plants a very flushed-looking kiss on Jane's mouth. “You know it!” she says, and now you're even more confused as to what's going on here. 

“Um, that's not exactly what I, uh, meant. We, uh, heard from the camp that Jake is in heat also. So, Aradia offered to come down and bring you two back up to help.”

To your surprise, the two of them blush furiously and Roxy bursts out laughing. 

“Help! Oh. My. Gog. Wow,” she laughs.

“I think I'd rather decline. It would be too weird,” Jane chokes out.

“Human incest taboos,” Karkat says. “Fucking figures that senseless hoofbeastshit would extend to an inexplicable number of inappropriate situations.” 

Jane relaxes a little, her blush starting to drain. “Yes. It would be strange for a number of reasons.”

“Enough of this crap,” Karkat says. “Roxy, check on Eridan. I'd say try not to pail him, but I have just now given up caring forever about any kind of human non-quadrant fuckery. You have my official friendleader 'try not to be a total fuck up, and don't give me any details' blessing. Tavros, go see if Nepeta is back from hunting yet and get her kitty ass over here. Gamzee, you're with me.”

Roxy gives Equius a little pap on the hand and winks at him. “You just sit your tight little ass tight, tall, blue and handsome. I'll be back before you know it.” 

“You are not to take him any alcohol,” Equius tells her. “I'm told it's bad for fetal development.” 

*

The next evening, Eridan bursts in to the sunset meal soaking wet and shirtless and drags Equius off by his hair. Roxy cheers drunkenly, then makes everyone have a toast. She later admits to you that she may have accidentally “sexed up” Eridan's “sexy fish ass... underwater!” You try to remind her that the ashen quadrant is conciliatory but she assures you that she has the best plan, you don't even know.

Karkat enlists Terezi of all people to help him keep an eye, or lack of one, on Kankri and Cronus. Dave says it's because she's a woman who loves the smell of a fresh train wreck in the morning, whatever that means. Personally, you think she likes antagonizing Kankri nearly as much as she likes antagonizing Karkat. If she can get both their metaphorical bleatbeasts at once, she's even happier. 

The village is absolutely electric with gossip for the next several days. There is a tension in the air that is not helped by the punishing Bright-season heat. Everyone seems snappy, sullen or manic, except Cronus, who is smug as hell and defiantly proud of his swollen abdomen. Eridan refuses to set foot out of his houseboat, even for the weekly fishing trip. 

Dirk and Jake send word that they're going to stay at the waterwheel camp until some mysterious, key phase of the construction is complete. Dirk messages you to say thank you.

\--timaeusTestified [TT] started trolling adiosToreador [AT]-- 

TT: Hey, man. Just wanted to say thanks for letting me know about Jake's potential peril.  
TT: Turned out the only peril was to my maidenly virtue but the gesture is still appreciated.  
AT: uH, nO PROBLEM  
AT: mOSTLY, i'M JUST GLAD, tHINGS ARE OK  
AT: uH  
AT: hOW IS HE TAKING IT? jAKE, i MEAN  
TT: Surprisingly well.  
TT: He keeps talking about how it'll be just like in Junior.  
TT: For your reference, that was an Earth movie.  
TT: More specifically, it was among the worst Earth movies ever conceived, written, filmed and distributed. The kind of movie not even he should actually like.  
TT: I grew up alone on an even smaller and more deserted island than him, so no excuses there.  
AT: uH  
TT: It was a movie about a human male getting pregnant. That's why it's relevant here.  
AT: oH, i UH, tHOUGHT THAT HUMAN MALES, cOULDN'T GET PREGNANT, oRIGINALLY  
TT: That's true. But it didn't stop people from imagining that scenario. It was actually a fairly common trope, usually played for comedy. Though, some subcultures employed it as a means of allowing fictional male-male pairings to reproduce in romantic stories.  
TT: You have to remember that bearing and raising offspring together was idealized as the mark of a deep red-romantic bond in some human cultures.  
TT: Also, most human cultures privileged the idea of rearing offspring who are direct genetic descendants over rearing genetically unrelated children.  
AT: sO, tHAT'S WHY JANE IS ALL UPSET, oVER EQUIUS AND ERIDAN  
TT: Is she? Those two are pretty upsetting for several reasons.  
TT: Jane lets herself get too involved. I should drop her a line, maybe.  
AT: tHAT MIGHT BE, hELPFUL, fOR HER  
TT: Thanks for letting me know about that too, then.  
TT: But the take home lesson here is this:  
TT: Do not let Jake talk you into watching Junior, ever. It is truly awful and would probably traumatize anyone who was less than at home with mammalian reproduction.  
TT: I should go through all his computers and make sure he doesn't have it on any of them.  
AT: iF IT'S THAT BAD, tHAT MIGHT BE A VERY, uH, GOOD THING TO DO  
AT: hEROIC EVEN  
AT: tHOUGH, UPSETTING YOUR MATESPRIT, mIGHT NOT BE WORTH IT, jUST FOR ME  
TT: Eradicating that movie from existence would be a service to all of human-troll kind.  
TT: Also, I'd appreciate it if you didn't refer to us as matesprits. That term doesn't really apply to us since our relationship isn't based on pity.  
TT: We've all started to use the words love and pity interchangeably, but as far as I can tell there's something fundamentally different about those two concepts.  
AT: yOU, uH, mIGHT BE RIGHT  
AT: wHAT DO YOU THINK THE DIFFERNCE IS?  
TT: Now there's a question.  
TT: When humans use the world pity, it implies a fundamentally unequal relationship. One person is in a position of power or advantage and holds the other in contempt for their weakness, even if they don't have malicious intentions.  
TT: That's why having sex with someone out of pity would be considered hurtful or insulting by most humans.  
AT: oH  
TT: I consider Jake to by my equal. I wouldn't settle for any partner who wasn't my equal. Pity has no place in a partnership like ours.  
TT: Though maybe this line of reasoning still comes down to semantics.  
TT: If you have any insight on the matter, lay it on me.  
AT: i tHINK,  
AT: oNE THING iS, fOR TROLLS, iT WAS VERY DANGEROUS TO BE  
AT: sEEN AS, vULNERABLE  
AT: aND TO PITY SOMEONE, uH, pARTIALLY MEANT THAT  
AT: yOU SAW THEIR WEAKNESSES, bUT DIDN'T FEEL LIKE, yOU WANTED TO HURT THEM, oR TAKE ADVANTAGE, oF THAT.  
TT: Huh. That actually explains a lot.  
TT: Horns, you're all right.  
AT: tHANKS  
AT: i THINK, yOU'RE MAYBE NOT AS, uH, iNTIMIDATING, aS I THOUGHT  
TT: Well, now, I wouldn't go that far.  
TT: I am a pretty towering paragon of intellect and sick rhymes.  
AT: tRUE  
TT: Maybe I'll hit you up again, next time I need some crazy troll shit explained in inverted case.  
AT: iF i COME UP WITH ANY MORE INSIGHTS, oN THE MATTER YOU MENTIONED  
AT: i COULD LAY THEM ON YOU, aT SUCH A TIME  
TT: Sure, I'd like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bonus scene that was formerly here is now a part of [this sidefic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/580354).


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamzee lays an egg

It is the middle of the weekly meeting when you notice something's wrong with Gamzee. Jane has just given the food-supply update. Equius is starting in on the dwindling scrap metal supply and the endless hangups with the planned smelter and foundry. If anyone actually knew anything about metallurgy it would probably be going better, you think.

It's honestly not that unusual for you and Gamzee to not pay attention at weekly meeting. You try not to make each other giggle too much. But tonight there's something about the faint flush across his cheekbones, the occasional hitch in his breathing, or maybe – you lean a little closer – the way he smells? His palm is resting on his stomach, his skin clammy. He sways a little when you nudge him, and his eyes pass over you without seeing, his attention turned inward. 

Something is wrong.

When Equius finishes, Gamzee lifts himself off of your cushion pile and shambles out into the dark. You follow, hastily promising that you'll call for someone if you need help. He sways down the path toward your house and you rush to pull his arm around your shoulders and stabilize him. Where the path forks down toward the dunes, he changes course abruptly, yanking you along with him.

“Gamzee?” you ask, “Do you, uh, feel like going for a swim?” 

“I feel real heavy,” he mutters. “Something's up and telling me to get my float on for a little while.” 

At the edge of the beach he begins peeling off his clothes. Sometimes the two of you still get in moods where you can't keep your hands off each other. You've had to excuse yourselves from social gatherings more than once. Part of you hopes that's all this episode is. The rest of you is pretty sure that's not actually the case.

“Clothes off,” he tells you, “Come with me. Please.” 

His thin, not-human skin is pale in the moonlight, his ribs and gills slits striping his chest with subtle shadows. He grunts softly and you see the muscles of his abdomen ripple. 

Oh. Suddenly, you've very sure where this is going. 

You take a deep breath as Gamzee peels your shirt off, trying to center yourself enough to commune with the breeze. All air is Breath to you, and your Breath can be here or it can be somewhere else, whispering a message in Jane's ear. 

The bay is warm and still, slow wavelets plopping over your ankles and tumbling sand around your toes. You are just thigh deep when Gamzee collapses, his seven gill-pairs flaring, his hair floating out like black seamoss. It is shallow enough for you to sit and gather him in to your chest. His contractions ripple through his body in time with the slow waves. 

_The beach,_ you whisper to Jane, _in the water. He's having contractions._

“Gamzee, I think you're in labor,” you tell him. “Does it hurt?” The way he's lolling in your arms makes you desperate for him to respond.

He shakes his head, one horn bumping against the side of your neck. “It's... intense,” he tells you. 

“You're going to be fine. Jane's coming. We know what to do.” 

You hear someone calling his name and call back, “Here!” And then Jane is there and Karkat too, splashing into the waves in all his clothing. 

“Hey, best friend,” Gamzee grunts, reaching for his hand. “Glad – nnnh – you're here.” 

“Where else would I be, you colossal fuckup?” Karkat asks, and gosh, you've never heard him sound so, well, emotional. With emotions other than anger that is.

Jane is all business, on her knees in the water, arranging Gamzee's legs, feeling his clenching abdomen with her small, capable hands.

“Well, something is certainly happening here,” she says, brittle but cheerful.

“This is a thing that's happening, motherfuckers.” Gamzee agrees. “A beautiful thing, with my favorite motherfuckers.” He gives a rasping chuckle, tips his head back and smiles at you. Your bloodpusher unclenches all at once and you smile back.

The bay rocks you gently in its embrace, three anchors for the long mass of Gamzee's body. The Big moon is just past its fullest tonight. Wanderer and Peregrine linger near it, their conjunction a few weeks passed, and the small, yellow Aimless moon hovers at the horizon. Gamzee pants and hums and grunts, pushing and resting. His bulge slides out, clenching around your hand where it rests low on his belly, as if looking for comfort. Time flows like water and sand through your fingers, falling in blobs and drips.

Finally, there is a crescendo and a cloud of dark fluid in the water. Jane lifts something shining from the sea. It is round and perfect and pale. It seems to glow in her hands. You can hardly breathe, looking at it.

She places Gamzee's egg on his chest and his arms come up to cradle it. He presses his head into the crook of your neck, humming. 

You become aware, then, of the others. The whole village is on the beach, sitting in pairs and clusters, keeping silent vigil. Feferi stands slowly and begins to sing. Her voice is sweet and wordless, spinning out like whalesong over the water. Eridan's high tenor joins in after a moment, echoing back from his houseboat anchored in the bay. A rich bass voice that can only be Equius joins in counterpoint. 

Gamzee's contented rumble surrounds you and you find yourself humming back an involuntary note. The surface of the egg is pliable and tender as suede. 

When you both feel ready to come back to shore, there are many hands waiting to help you home.

*

In the first day and night after the egg's birth, everyone in the village stops by your house. Gamzee sleeps for hours and hours, curled around the egg in a supportive nest of pillows. This leaves you to field the visitors, when all you want to do is snuggle in, stare dopily at your matesprit and admire the perfect, speckled curve of the egg. Eridan comes alone, in the darkest part of the night, and surprises you with a vicious hug. Even Nepeta stops by with Jade, though they don't stay long. You don't snap at anyone who comes knocking, though you'd really, really like to. Most of them bring you food, pillows or blankets or other little gifts, so you try to be polite. 

Even now, after all that's happened, conversations tend to die when Gamzee wanders up. Sometimes you catch the moment your friends' expressions shutter and you know that they're reminding themselves what he did, that those things can't be forgotten. You know that he knows it too. His passive Rage powers let him hear their fear, their suspicion like a shout.

Karkat is the one officially assigned to keep Gamzee from killing anyone ever again. You know Karkat worries that their moirallegience is tainted by this charge, or is somehow onesided or something, but that is, as you've pointed out to him, stupid. You just keep Gamzee close and hope that that maybe is a thing that helps.

Sollux and Feferi are the only guests you allow to linger for any length of time, mostly because Sollux looks exhausted. You ask him how he's feeling and he tells you, “This sucks, everything sucks, I have never been so constantly uncomfortable in my entire life, it's driving me crazy.” He also tells you he still hasn't been able to raise Latula's Radical Rumpus Adventure Party on the radio. He's been trying to check on his dancestor, but their group has been out of radio range for weeks, exploring the vast grasslands west of the mountains.

When Karkat comes by the third time in as many hours, you ask him to stay and deal with the visitors so you can get some sleep. Much later, you wake up to find him curled in the nest with you and Gamzee. Kanaya and Rose are there too, sitting formally, the egg cradled in Kanaya's lap. One of your horns is pinned under Gamzee's head, so you throttle down your urge to lunge at her and snatch it away. Your bloodpusher knocks about your thorax, hammering against the hand Gamzee lays on your chest.

“Not that anyone will be surprised if he is carrying twins,” Rose is saying. 

She and Kanaya are leaning into each other very subtly and you think they might be holding hands. Kanaya is stroking the egg's leathery, tan and indigo shell with the very tips of her white fingers. She has a half-lidded, hypnotized glaze in her eyes and a tender curl of a smile. 

“Mr. Nitram, glad you've decided to join us,” Rose tells you. “We were just discussing what you might need to effect the best care of your egg. It seems likely that it will not hatch for quite some time, as the development of a complex brain is a lengthy process.”

“Our Thread-sis is going to make me something to carry it around in, so's I can keep her warm while I'm working,” Gamzee tells you. He looks so meltingly happy all you want to do is kiss him. 

“Can you maybe let me up?” you ask him instead.

He does, and you abscond to what amounts to your ablution block, actually a gravity-fed basin and ablution trap you'll have to get walled and roofed in some time before next winter. The sun beats down on you, sweat springing up on your upper lip. You splash a little water on your face and horns, careful not to waste too much. The jury-rigged tap is kind of tricky and summers here are dry. Your rain catchment hasn't been refilled in a while.

You take a couple deep breaths. You don't like this weird, agitated feeling, the grouchy sourceless urge to slap your friends' hands away from what's yours. You've always felt more comfortable channeling your aggression into fiduspawn and FLARP, games that maybe sometimes crossed a line into real danger but were ultimately safe and pretend. You've had lots of people take lots of things out on you and you're not about to start doing it back, at least not to anyone around the village these days. You wouldn't even want to take things out on Vriska. You learned your lesson there. 

What you'd really like to do right this second is not go back inside and sit through another Rose lecture while your egg gets passed around and petted. What you'd really like to do is fly and fly until the breeze blowing through your think-pan leaves you emptied and calmed. If your Breath powers were active like John's you'd take Gamzee with you, hold his hand and blow the two of you up above the clouds, till the village was an invisible pock in the coastline below. But your powers don't really work that way. Your passive sensing powers are the only ones under your conscious control, though you can commune with the breeze well enough to fill a sail or throw a whisper. You're not about to go around falling off things hoping for a repeat of the greenhouse incident. 

You've never lived with other people like this before. Your old hive was miles from your closest neighbor. Tinkerbull, your animals and your gaming friends were plenty of company. Trollian was a comfort when you needed it and easily turned off when you didn't. It's not as bad as things were living in the Veil, or over the rain-lashed winter when the only real buildings were First House and the half-built Dorms. But it feels like you're all still living in each others' pockets. There are only so many people left in the world, now, and that means that everyone is constantly up in everyone else's business. There is simply no other business to be up in. 

You scrub at your hair again, frustrated by your train of thought. You should be glad to live with your friends, to be part of what Rose and Kankri keep calling a 'community.' Things would be much harder if you and Gamzee were on your own, with no carpenter drones or lusus to help you find food and shelter. You are the carpenter drones now, you are the lusii. 

You go back inside and ask everyone to come back later, after you get some more sleep. Yes, even Karkat.

You're careful not to lean your weight on Gamzee as you press kisses down his chest. A dark line marks the center of his stomach, rising a handspan over his carelessly tied skirt. His belly skin is soft and a little loose under your lips, like well-kneaded bread dough. He rumbles happily at you, watching you from the corner of his eye. The egg rests against his cheek, cradled in the crook of his shoulder on the pillow. 

“Come back up here,” he says. 

You kiss for a while. It's comfortable, leading nowhere and expecting nothing much. Suddenly it seems very strange to think you would not live with Gamzee on Alternia. You'd have seen him a lot, eventually exchanged genetic material. But trolls are, or were, solitary creatures. You, your broken spine and your empty black pail would have faced the drones alone.

“Glad you up and chased them all off for me,” Gamzee says. “Might need you to do it again some time.”

“It's okay for you to ask for things yourself, you know. Not that I mind asking for you, or anything like that.”

“Wouldn't want to feel them frightened of me, is all.” 

“I know.”

You bunch a pillow under your chin so you can look at him. Your horns are awesome and getting really big, but they make it so you can't really lay on your side, which is sometimes inconvenient. His hair is falling in his eyes, so you brush it back.

“It's weird for me, you know,” you tell him. “Having these reactions that seem kind of irrational. Feeling sort of overprotective of you, both of you, and having to remind myself you're not in danger. Feeling sort of like I can't predict myself. You make all this seem so easy to handle. Like it doesn't bother you.” 

He looks at you very seriously. “Being another person is all I up and want. The bits of me I know the best are the bits worth being scared of. You're not motherfucking like that though. Tav, you got beauty down to bone and blood. Ain't nothing in your think-pan I don't got love for.”

You pull him on top of you, tugging and turning until he's lounging between your legs. You kiss him hard, and again. His sharp hipbones press into you and for a moment you imagine what it might feel like, his bulge so deep inside you that it couldn't escape. Yourself, unable to escape the cool flood of his genetic material, filling you further and further. The spike of arousal you feel makes you cold all over.

“Oh,” you say. “Do you think everyone's acting so weird because they all stopped pailing each other?”

Gamzee blinks twice, then collapses on your chest, helpless with laughter. 

“Might be on to something there,” he honks. “All them hard up motherfuckers getting their frustration on.” 

When you finally stop giggling, he rolls the egg until it's tucked against your neck and shoulder like he had it earlier. It has a subtle, comforting scent. Its shell is still suede-soft, but thicker and less malleable than it was. You realize that it is breathing, the life inside cycling air through the porous shell. You can almost imagine it has a pulse, a slight flutter you can feel against your cheek. 

“There,” Gamzee says, smiling down at you. “All things in their motherfucking place.” 

“Gamzee,” you say, “ Do you pity me?”

“Now, what kind of question is that, Tav? Course I up and pity you. I'm redder for you than any motherfucking red thing you could name.”

“No, I know, sorry. What I meant is. Do you think there's a difference between love and pity?” 

He lays his chin on his hand on your chest, and reaches up to touch the egg. 

“I think,” he says, “Words are a real motherfucking problem sometimes. Words is like, all these little pots and pans, and the feels we got are big enough to overflow 'em all. Always some part bubbling out, getting all burnt onto the oven floor.”

“I know that it's Karkat's job, and that it's maybe not what a matesprit's supposed to do. But I want to be strong for you. I want to be strong enough to keep you.” 

“Tavros, you're stronger than I ever been or ever will be. You and Palebro are the motherfucking rocks I cling to in this place. So quit that heavy shit. This is us, and we are what we are. Folks would have it easier if they could up and chuck all them tiny pans.”

“Like, just eat the batter right from the bowl?” 

“You know it. That shit is motherfucking delicious.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a Rainbow Rumpus Skinnydipping Party; a most delicious color-making and gossip appreciation hour

\-- apocalypseArisen [AA] started trolling adiosToreador [AT]-- 

AA: hi tavros!  
AT: hI! aRE YOU BACK FROM THE MOUNTAIN, aLREADY?  
AA: yes! damara finally agreed to come down to the camp for a while  
AA: so i can stay at the village as long as i need to this time  
AT: i'M REALLY GLAD, tO HEAR THAT  
AT: wE ALL MISS YOU  
AT: nOT THAT WE DON'T, rESPECT THE WORK YOU DO, aND YOUR CHOICE TO DO IT  
AA: i know  
AA: it has been hard for me too  
AA: i have a present for you and kanaya  
AA: i found some nice samples of the mountain-hoofbeast wool you guys wanted to examine  
AA: it's very soft!  
AT: oH, yEAH  
AT: i HAVE BEEN WONDERING, hOW CLOSELY RELATED THEY ARE, tO THE VALLEY HOOFBEASTS  
AA: some time when things have settled down a little i can fly you up here so you can meet some of them  
AA: they have really serious faces with little beards  
AA: it's cute  
AT: tHANKS, fOR THINKING OF THAT  
AT: i'M REALLY GLAD TO HEAR, yOU'RE COMING HOME  
AT: kANAYA TOLD ME, sOLLUX WILL PROBABLY GO INTO LABOR SOON  
AA: i know  
AA: time player remember? i've been counting the days really carefully  
AA: don't tell sollux but i'm coming back tonight  
AA: it'll be a surprise!

 

The Big moon has finally reached its waning quarter, beginning the Dim portion of its long month. Soon it will move in front of the sun, blocking some of the daylight and alleviating the oppressive heat. But soon is not now, and now it is so hot in the afternoons that no one can sleep. Swimming parties become a daily occurrence and what little daytime napping goes on mostly happens on the deep, cool stone porch of First House.

The tides have gone down enough that there has been talk about building up the breakwater. You and Gamzee are headed down to meet Roxy there when you run into Feferi and Sollux on the dune path. 

“Sollux, you need to walk places! Your legs will stop working if you don't use them,” Feferi is saying. Sollux has been levitating himself everywhere these days, his thin, sleeveless robe fluttering around his ankles.

“Oh my gog, Fef, why? It's just a few more days and then I'll be done with this. Besides, this sand is fucking hot.”

“You'll be done with this part of it! You're still going to have an egg to take care of, silly.”

“But it won't be inside my fucking body anymore, thank gog. Assuming I survive popping this mess out.”

“You nervous, Solbro?” Gamzee asks.

Sollux rolls his mismatched eyes. “I'm more nervous that I'll be trapped like this forever.”

He clutches Feferi's hand like a lifeline even while he bitches at her. The two of them haven't been seen apart since Sollux's heat. You wonder how they can stand it sometimes.

A few people are already splashing around the beach, the sand scattered with crumpled clothes. No one thought to alchemize bathing suits, so pretty much everyone just swims naked. It's easier than doing extra laundry and no one's really shy about it anymore.

You pick your way along the white stones of the breakwater. A few have shifted noticeably and will have to be repositioned before it can be made taller. Gamzee finds himself a good perch in a sliver of shade and settles in with the egg in his lap. You're fairly sure it could survive being dropped into water, but it would drown pretty quickly if it were left submerged. 

“You go on, Tav. I'm gonna up and zone out for a while, like, and just watch your fine figure get all wet and motherfucking athletic.”

Your cheeks feel a little warm, but you like his eyes on you. You take your time stripping out of your clothes, letting him watch you. Then you take a deep Breath and dive. 

Your gills flutter happily as you paddle downward. The sun throws dancing ripples on the corals and rocks. Here, on the inward side, the breakwater looks fairly undamaged. An undulating pink form streaks toward you, scattering shoals of colorful fish. 

“OMG, fish-crew reunion!” Roxy glubs, her voice distorted by the water. “Tavros! Underwater high five!”

You high five her in underwater slow motion. She grabs you by the hand and takes off swimming at speed, hauling you behind her. It's exhilarating as flying. Eridan races up, pacing you through a few loops and dives before darting off again in a swirl of tiny bubbles. His gravid body is made graceful and sleek by his ease in the water. You laugh until your Breath runs low, then detach yourself and float up toward the surface.

The breakwater is a little far, but not terribly. You dawdle, stroking slowly back, watching your friends' dark heads bob in the waves. More people have gathered while you were cavorting with the fish-crew and the rocks are bright with towels and discarded clothing. The sun is starting to go down, the long shadows of the trees creeping over the dunes. John and Dave appear to be having a cannonball contest, or possibly just trying to splash as many people as possible. John, with his ability to cannonball out of midair, is winning. Dave appears to be doing his in slow motion. He's probably playing for style points.

Roxy pops up beside you as you reach the group. 

“Check this out,” she grins, and slaps an enormous fish onto the rocks. 

Gamzee grabs it by the tail so it won't flip itself back into the water. 

“You up and catch this with your bare hands, my fine fishy sister?”

“You fuckin know it. Fish ninja!” Roxy crows and dives backwards out of sight. 

“Hi Gamzee,” you say. “Sorry I was gone so long.”

“Ain't no thing, Tav. I was just getting my chill on and enjoying a fine ass view.” 

He gives you that lazy, heated look that used to make you blush so bad. Now, it makes you smile and square your shoulders. You are about to ask if he wants to come in, when Roxy surfaces again, a purple-streaked head surfacing with her. 

“See, Eridan! Gamzee really needs you to hold his egg so he can come cool off!” she chirps, winking at Gamzee. 

No, no, no, he killed the matriorb, NO, your brain screams. Sollux, Feferi and Terezi, seated nearby, go quiet and watchful. Terezi's tongue flicks at her lips, tasting the air. Eridan looks like he wants to flee, but Roxy's got his wrist in her unbreakable iron grip. 

“That sure would be a help, if you don't up and mind,” Gamzee says. He rests a deliberate hand on yours. You realize you are trembling. 

Eridan hesitates until it seems like Roxy will bodily haul him out of the water. When he heaves himself up onto the rocks his movements lose their grace, becoming heavy. Gamzee gestures him over, settles the egg on his chest and knots the sling around his wet shoulders. 

“Nothing to it,” Gamzee says, patting his back. “Keep her safe for me.” Then, he strips out of his clothes, slides down the rocks and disappears. 

You really want to watch Gamzee swim. He's all angles, even in the water, limbs folding and unfolding like something half-mechanical. But you can't make yourself take your eyes off Eridan and your egg. 

It sits high on his chest, balanced on the roundness of his stomach. He is very still, clutching his elbows as he wraps his arms around the it without touching it. He tucks his knees up as if to catch it, though it is secure in its sling. Finally, slowly, he lowers his face to it, touches his cheek carefully to its surface. His face fins give a little flutter.

“It's soft,” he says, surprised.

The atmosphere relaxes. Roxy grins and pokes you, waggling her eyebrows. You shove her shoulder and she shoves you back, playfully. You're hovering, but you can't make yourself move away.

Terezi eels over until she's right within arm's reach of Eridan, her cane placed between them deliberately. She displays all her teeth at him. He looks like he's steeling himself for an argument. 

“What the grubfisting, nookswabbing fuck is this?” Karkat says. 

“Oh, hi Karkles!” Terezi grins, “We're just having a Rainbow Rumpus Skinnydipping Party. Sorry, no party-pooping grouch-faces invited.”

“Oh, cute. Way to try and distract me from entirely more pressing matters at hand, chiefly who let this genocidal, homicidal, matricidal fuckup hold my moirail's egg?”

“That would be me, palebro,” Gamzee says, close behind you. He drapes himself over your back, his chin digging into your shoulder. “My fine fishbro friend there is just holding her so I can get my dip on. You look like you could use a cool-down too, motherfucker.” 

Karkat looks for a moment like he might put up a fight, then deflates. The moment after that, a gust of wind sends him sailing off the breakwater, his expression of outrage fully formed before he even hits the water. 

John eventually lets Karkat catch him and give him a good ducking, though John has enough gills to breathe through it easily. Eridan is very careful not to let so much as a stray splash touch the egg, though Terezi at one point manages to lick it while Roxy distracts him. Aradia wins the cannonball contest. She blasts up the valley and into the water like a meteor, psionics detonating a wave of spray all over the breakwater, beach and distant houseboat. When she bobs to the surface she chirps “Surprise!” and gives Sollux double pistols and a wink. 

A fire is lit on shore and Gamzee grills fresh-caught fish over the flames. Someone is sent up to the kitchens for more food and eventually the whole sunset meal ends up down on the sand, bottles of wine passed around with Jane's delicate honey-cakes. 

You cuddle against Gamzee with your moirail propped against your chest. She hugs your egg, and murmurs half-distracted gossip from up the river. You watch John and Sollux both try to lean on Karkat, his face pinking as he shoves them off. Even Eridan hangs out, though he doesn't relax until Jane confirms that Equius refused to leave the workshops.

The night's chores are waiting for you, but there is time first to enjoy this spontaneous welcome home party. Your chores will still be there when you're ready.

*

By now, you should know better than to wander around near First House without looking like you're on some kind of a mission. That's just asking to be conscripted into someone else's project, usually involving some kind of repetitive, finicky task or heavy lifting. You'd woken early in the afternoon, drifted over to find food and before you knew it, Porrim had you agreeing to help with her ongoing ink and dye experiments. 

The broad, shaded lawn between the workshops and the strife-practice yard is cooled by an on-shore breeze, smelling of the sea. The forge is running today and the woosh of John's wind powers stoking the fire is steady under intermittent hammering and banter. A long, narrow firepit has been set up with a row of fire-blackened pots starting to steam on it. Porrim directs you to a blanket where Terezi sits surrounded by mounds of random plant life. You settle the egg in your lap and steel yourself for hours of plucking flower petals, grinding roots, and being cross examined.

“Ah, Tavros and our favorite chocolately-grape spheroid!” Terezi sniffs. “Welcome to our most delicious color-making and gossip appreciation hour.” 

“Hi Terezi,” you say. “What colors are you working on?” 

“A whole fruitylicious rainbow of colors. Colors that become other colors in the boiling pan. Take these little nuts. Their inner membranes may be scrumptious candy red, but they stain things a creamy banana yellow. Appropriate, considering this evening's likely events.”

She hands you a bowl of crushed nuts to separate. After a few seconds of picking through them, you realize you can winnow them, letting handfulls fall through a stream of Breath so the papery membranes blow free of the heavier husks.

“Smart,” Porrim comments. “We will have to make sure you and John are on the grain-harvest crew, when the time comes.” 

“Have you noticed, Tavros, that it has only been males falling Earth Human Pregnant so far? What are we to make of this observation? I am hoping Dave will be next, though Karkat's tears of scandalized self-pity would be delicious as well.” 

“Ah ha, right down to the gossip, as promised,” Porrim says, stirring various concoctions on the hearth. “So, Terezi, which one of them will bear the fruit of your loins? Or do you need to check the schedule?” 

“Come, now, you're embarrassing our help,” Terezi grins, “His lovely chocolate-strawberry blush is most distracting.” 

You lean away from her a little, hoping she won't try to lick your face, and scramble for a counter-distraction. “Uh, Terezi, if you don't mind me, uh, asking, what is the deal with the schedule?” 

“The deal is this: I prevent Dave from ripping it down because I find it hilarious. Karkat, of course, is the only one who thinks it means anything. John pretends to be unaware of its deeper implications. Why do you ask, Mr. Candy-blushes? Is Karkles' complete incompetence with romance finally starting to upset your matesprit?” 

You consider. “Gamzee and Karkat seem, to me, to be mostly fine. But it also seems to me that Karkat doesn't think so. For one thing, there's the part where Karkat is his official moirail for peacekeeping purposes.”

“His jailer,” Terezi grins.

“That is not the way I prefer to think about it, though it has aspects of being true. I think, it hurts Karkat to think of it that way, too. I think they really balance each other like moirails are supposed to. But, also, Gamzee has decided that quadrants are just feelings now and Karkat keeps saying that that's stupid.”

“Interesting,” Terezi says. “Your thoughts, Madame Melon-liqueur?” 

Porrim smiles. “I am on an official break from all quadrant-related activities,” she says.

“Yes, what does one do next when one has already cycled all the available candidates through their quadrants' well-greased revolving doors?”

“Start over?” you say. Maybe if you blush hard enough, you'll pass out and can avoid the rest of this conversation. 

Terezi and Porrim just laugh, though, and Porrim says there may be hope for you yet. You finish with the bowl of nuts, scraping the escaped bits up off the blanket. Porrim passes you a basket of wilting flowers and directs you to separate the petals, stamens and stems into three separate trays. 

“Human non-quadrant relationships,” Terezi pronounces. “A confusing and increasingly relevant topic. Perhaps you'd care to hold forth on this, since quadrants are currently off the table?”

“You'd know more about it that I would,” Porrim counters, “Since you live with two of them. But I must admit to watching the situation with Equius, Eridan, Roxy and Jane with some degree of professional curiosity.” 

“A veritable textbook human non-quadrant relationship wedged into an established kismesissitude to aid them in rearing offspring. A fascinating if somewhat precarious arrangement. Tavros, I hear you were there when it happened?”

“I, uh, was present for some of the events that probably constitute it happening. Uh, not that I was really involved. I just happened to be there.” 

“But it's true that Jane claims to have no ashen feelings for them?”

“I guess. She said she, uh, didn't understand how breaking up fights is romantic. Actually, I, uh, think the whole idea of caliginous hate is kind of upsetting to her.” 

Terezi licks thoughtfully at the flower in her hand. “A familiar attitude.” 

Porrim winks at you. “Familiar how?” she asks.

Terezi makes a face. “Jane and John are, in some ways, the most similar ancestor-descendant pair. John claims it is because of their apparently mutual human father. Human adult-lusii seem to have a pervasive effect on the mentalities of the young they raise. Rest assured I will be keeping a close eye on this one, to observe the process first hand.” 

She lays a hand on your egg, her unfocused teal eyes meeting yours uncannily behind her red glasses.

“I think that we, might need the help. And you're Karkat's, uh, whatever. So. That's something like family, at least as far as I, uh, understand that term?” you tell her. There is no escape from her anyway, so best to be graceful about it.

Porrim makes a noise of frustration. “Terezi, must you always dodge a question until I point out your doing so?” she says. “Fine, let me just ask you plainly and unambiguously. Karkat – red or black?”

“Objection! Ambiguous situations call for ambiguous answers. Karkat doesn't see why I can't flip red or black for him whenever he wants me to. If it were just me and him, it might be possible. But it would make Dave unhappy, though he denies this. Add the vagaries of John, the recent interest of Sollux, and the various romantic fixations and neurosis of those involved, and you'll find the situation just as unclear to the participants as the voyeurs.”

“I don't see how Karkat can be as hung up on Troll Serendipity as everyone seems to think,” you say, “Since he has three different people sort of in his black quadrant and red quadrant at the same time.” 

“He seems to think we'll sort ourselves naturally into red, black and ash if he waits long enough. But John's involvement effectively nixes that plan. John acts so pale for him sometimes it turns him all delicious red with frustration. And then there are the pranks, which, for any sane and rational troll, would be borderline black solicitations. And then he'll get between Karkat and I when we're just starting to get good and angry, or jump between Karkat and Dave when they start bickering.” 

“Maybe what John and Karkat need is an auspistice?” Porrim suggests.

“Are you volunteering? No? I have considered this, of course. Kanaya would be the obvious candidate, but Rose refused to let her intervene. I even, at one point, started feeling out Jade for the job. But it seems that our ex-humans have separately or together decided to sidestep or outright refuse any quadrant-style relationships. Unless you mean for John to be the auspistice, which I think would lead to a situation quite like Jane's raspberry-blueberry-strawberry dilemma.” 

“Do you think it's weird that we're only just figuring all this stuff out now?” you ask. “We've all been living together for a long time. You, I guess, have been living with humans the longest.” 

“Well, this whole mammalian reproduction episode has forced a number of issues.” Terezi sighs, “It's actually fairly predictable timing, though. We've been working too hard since we left the game to spend much energy on these kind of romcom shenanigans. The necessities of survival have won out over teen drama, except for a few notable incidents last winter.”

Most of those involved Vriska. You are glad yet again that she and Meenah snuck off to play pirates. They haven't been back for over a month.

Porrim sits very straight, regal in her dye-blotched apron and black dress, dipping a skein of lumpy yarn into a steaming pan. “Circumstances in the game were perfect for manufacturing drama,” she says, “The shock of watching the world destroyed, the constant adrenaline of combat, the ability to alchemize any material thing we might want. And then, of course, there were the uncountable sweeps of our afterlives, without any physical danger, hunger or thirst. Sometimes I wonder how we retained as much of our sanity as we did. Perhaps the game selected for the abandoned and rabidly self-involved because they were the only sort of people who could endure it.”

Terezi nods. “It's been interesting to observe how we've all adapted to working hard, don't you think? Did you know that none of the humans were considered old enough to work when they entered their session?”

“Neither were we, really,” you point out.

“Right now we are on a small plateau before harvest and winter preparations begin, before our resources start to run low. Soon enough we will have to get serious about making more metal and cloth, and things will probably settle down again,” Porrim says. 

“Not to mention all the work our adorable little wigglers will be!” Terezi cackles. “I am going to get Dave so pregnant. John and I will high five constantly about our fatherly virility. But hush, I think I smell the approach of another grapeberry mess.”

Cronus and Kankri's voices float across the yard from the path toward First House.

“Come on, you're always busy.” 

“I have this whole community to facilitate! It does take a significant amount of my time, and contributes directly to your own well-being as well as the greater good.”

“Oh, my gog. Fine. So, can I at least come hang out with you while you do your king of the tribe thing? I'll just lay myself out at your feet and not say anythin, I promise. I'll be like your decorative one-man harem. Maybe I can fan you or feed you fruit or somethin. Please?”

“As I just indicated, it will be a Seers' meeting. And so will probably prove very long, very erudite, and hopefully very productive. But only if you are not interrupting us because you've gone a triggering number of minutes without someone paying attention to you. I'm happy to validate your personhood further later tonight. We've been making some real progress on various issues which I hope you find as gratifying as I do. However, please find something else to do until then.” 

“Baby, you know nothin turns my crank like listenin to you talk for hours about meaninless, pretentious bullshit. I can sit and listen just fine. Maybe provide some stimulatin shoulder rubs, get those Seer juices circulatin.”

Terezi and Porrim stand in unison and approach the epicenter of the bickering. There is a clearly audible _pock_ as Terezi drubs Cronus in the shin with her cane.

“Oh! Mr. Violet Perfume! Didn't see you there!” she says.

“Hello, Terezi. It's time for the Seers' Open Dialog Committee meeting and we have some issues on our agenda this week that your Mindful insight could prove most constructive in deconstructing.”

“Kanny!” Porrim protests, “Are you about to take my help away? I'm right in the middle of something here.” 

“I must request for the umpteenth time that you not address me by that horrid belittling nickname.”

“If you are going to steal away all my labor, this deeply important project will never be completed. The artistic potential of our community will suffer in untold ways.”

Now would be the time to abscond, but you're distracted by how strange this is. Terezi was never the type to jump in and derail conflict before it could escalate. She preferred to lick her chops and twist the knife, or simply observe until things went too far and justice needed to be meted out. Before you can extract yourself from the tangle of plant bits and cognitive dissonance, Porrim is already dragging Cronus over. He's dressed in a thin baggy-sleeved robe, tied with a sash, exposing a stripe of his bare chest and pregnant belly.

“Porrim, you don't even like me,” he complains as she dumps him on the blanket and places a mortar and pestle in his hands.

“Just because I will not pail you does not mean I do not like you. However, you are correct.”

“Was that Human Sarcasm? I can never tell with you.”

“And here you're the self-proclaimed expert on humans.”

“Will you please stop bringin that up? So embarrassin. Oh, hey little Nitram.” 

“Uh, hi,” you say, trying not to be too obvious about angling your egg away from him. You've had some run-ins with him, one of which almost resulted in Karkat kicking his ass. 

He huffs a little, arranging himself into what he must think is a casual sprawl. Mostly he just looks uncomfortable and a little out of place. 

“How many more days of this, again?” he asks. 

“Ten or so,” Porrim tells him. “At least, if our projection based on Gamzee's cycle is accurate. We'll be more sure if Sollux does go into labor today.”

“Hey, Porrim. I've been wantin to ask you.” He touches his fingers to his hair, then lets his hand drop. Whatever he's been using for pomade leaves his hair wet-looking. “Since Meenah ain't here to take me in hand, I want you there when it's time for me to expel my wiggler-baby egg. I'd rather it was you than one of these smart-alek kids.” 

The suspicion in Porrim's face softens. “Only if you're on your best behavior.”

“Jeez. You're supposed to be everyone's hot fling not their lusus.”

“And there, you just changed my mind. Congratulations, that was impressively quick work.”

“You're just jerkin me around, now. Porrim, you know that kind of rejection is hard for me. Does no one understand that my feelins are fuckin delicate over here? You and Kankri are so much alike some times, it's no wonder that you can't stop antagonizin each other.” 

“Wow,” you say, standing as quickly as you can manage. “Look at the moonrise. I almost forgot that I have to go help, uh, Jade! Thanks for teaching me about dye stuff, Porrim, bye!” 

You abscond towards glorious freedom.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tavros plays creepy shipping messenger; John rambles sometimes

You completely fail to abscond toward glorious freedom. Instead, you blunder right into the middle of a moirail argument in progress. A harsh tug on the breeze keeps you from tripping over Equius and landing flat on your egg. 

“No.”

“Yes!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Nepeta, no.”

“Equius, yes, yes, yes! And stop arguing against things I know you really want to do!”

Equius is laying flat on his back outside his machine shop, one arm flung dramatically over his sweaty face, his fingers and forearms dark with smudged grease and dirt. Nepeta is attempting to pull him somewhere by the front of his shirt. The shirt appears to be the certain loser of the argument.

“Uh, sorry,” you say.

“Tavros!! Oh, and your cute eggy too. Hi, cutie!” Nepeta says, tickling the egg. “You two need to help me talk some sense into my moirail. He is being a gigantic stubborn idiot!”

“I am doing nothing of the sort and this is really none of the, er, your concern, Nitram. Please do not let Nepeta keep you from your business.”

“I, uh-” Your head is feeling kind of foggy all the sudden. 

“See, see!” Nepeta crows, “I know you can't smell yourself, but look at the way Tavros is swaying. You're totally irresistible right now. It will be fine!” 

Oh, gog. Equius is pinging off heat pheromones like he sweats, you realize. You try not to gag and bow your face close to your egg, breathing in its comforting scent. That helps, a lot. Your knees begin to unliquify.

“Eridan has refused all contact with me, since his... heat. Which is only appropriate given that I am his kismesis and he is in a weakened state. So, no, I do not believe he will want to see me, even in this circumstance.” 

“This is why I kept telling you that you needed to get your red quadrants straightened out!” Nepeta scolds. “I could have helped you! Jade is totally right, pre-arranging these things makes everything much easier!”

“Jade wanted you to pre-match her with a mate?” you ask, stunned.

“No, silly! Jade wants to _be_ my mate. We talked about it and then she took me on an Earth Human date and we hunted the hugest hornbeast and made out in the woods! It was really fun! So now when it's time, we'll know just what to do and we'll have an adorable little green cub. I hope I get to be the furrocious mommy!”

“I must appologize, Nepeta. My preoccupation with my own quadrants has kept me from preforming my duties as your moirail.”

“Stop trying to distract me!” Nepeta smacks him on the chest. “I wanted you to spend more time with Jane, remember? I think you two make the cuuutest match. Did you figure out if you're ash or flushed for her yet?” 

“Jane... I thought at first that she was quite seemly and polite, but soft. But, when we were building the village she helped me carry a cruxtruder down from the Door, just the two of us. She did not even break a sweat. She is kind, dignified and Strong. But she is human. She is not interested in quadrants.” 

You knew her Mangrit approached John's but you had no idea it was that high. You picture her and Gamzee in the kitchen, him handing her down things from high shelves, her hefting around heavy wooden tables and huge sacks of flour like they were weightless. Equius's voice goes all tender when he talks about her. He has been awkwardly flush-crushing on her that long, you realize. It's pretty obvious now that you think about it. 

“Well, maybe that's ok,” Nepeta says. “As long as Roxy doesn't mind sharing her. Dirk says that when I ship humans I should just use a slash instead of a quadrant symbol, since human 'love' is a little like all the fluffiest parts of every quadrant mashed together. Hey! Maybe this will help you and Jane make up your minds. We should get you over there right away!”

“Nepeta, that seems very discourteous and quite possibly ill-advised,” Equius protests.

“Maybe someone should go warn her?” you suggest.

“Would you Tavros? That would be pawfully sweet of you!” Nepeta exclaims. 

You are really on a roll today. But at least it will get you out of Equius's involuntary attraction zone. 

“Fine,” you say.

The kitchens are not very far. Gamzee looks up from the huge pile of dough he's working and gives you an enormous smile. 

“Well, hey, my main matesprit,” Gamzee says, leaning over to kiss you.”What the motherfuck can I do for your fine self this fine evening?” 

“Is Jane around?” you ask. “Equius is in heat and Nepeta talked me into playing creepy shipping messenger, somehow.”

Gamzee's eyes widen. “Oh yeah? Ninjasis came by looking all inebriated and chefsis had to up and take her home. Said she'd be back, though, if you up and want to wait.” 

Oh, gog. The Hope players had all gone into heat at once, hadn't they? 

“I think I'd better go find her. She's, uh, probably going to be pretty busy. So, I'll come back and help you with dinner. After.” 

“Thanks, Tav. You're the best motherfucking friend any of us got.” 

Eridan answers Jane and Roxy's door. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks, after you totally fail to say anything for a long moment. You must have a very strange look on your face.

“Uh,” you start, “Well. Nepeta sent me to tell Jane something. About. Uh.” 

Eridan raises an eyebrow. His look of greedy suspicion makes you blush.

“Can I maybe talk to her?” you squeak.

“Come on in,” he says.

You're not sure you want to go in there, but you steel yourself and do it anyway. 

Jane is in the respite block, trying to prevent Roxy from taking her shirt off. 

“Taaaavros!” Roxy drawls, “How's it hangining? I'm fucked uppp.” 

“Hi Roxy,” you say. She is very flushed, her pink-sheened skin gone even pinker than usual. 

“Jane, Nepeta sent me to tell you that, uh, Equius, also is, in heat. She was going to bring him to you, but, uh, I could tell her-”

“OH MY GOD!” Roxy shrieks, “Big Blue needs to get his fine ass here right fuckign now. Janey, don't even play like you don't want a piece of that awkward, adorable, hot sweaty mess. Holy crap! Errrriiiidaaaan!!! Did you hear this?!” 

Eridan gives a horrifying little chuckle from the doorway. The look on Jane's face is eerily composed. She tugs Roxy's shirt firmly back down around her waist. 

“I'll go talk to him,” Jane declares, giving Roxy a look that makes her subside into a giggling heap on the respite platform. Roxy makes grabby hands at Eridan, who moves to lower his pregnant bulk next to her. You think for a moment that they're going to need a much bigger platform, then regret that thought fiercely.

Jane walks you as far as the kitchen. She presses your hand, thanking you. Her control is so good, you'd never guess she's as strong as Equius says. You hope for her sake he wasn't exaggerating.

While you tell your tale of woe, Gamzee forms his last loaf of bread and puts it to rise under a thin cloth with the others. He dances you around and around the kitchen, rapping silly lyrics until you feel less traumatized. Then the two of you start washing and chopping tubers and bulbs for a fry-up. 

“Did Jane actually skip out on meal duties?” Karkat asks, wandering in. “Is that why I'm up to my nook in whiny, hungry assholes out here?” 

“It was an emergency palebro,” Gamzee says. “And if anyone hears a bunch of commotion coming for her place, might be better for them not to up and investigate. If you catch my meaning, here.” 

“Catching your meaning is like catching a rambling, grammatically confused meteor to the face. Roxy or Equius?” Karkat asks, pretending to look reluctant.

“Both,” you tell him. “And Eridan.” 

“Holy grubfucking, nookwafting shit on a stick. I would give every fucking boonbuck I've ever earned to unhear that.” 

“At least you didn't have to actually go down there!” you say. “I almost saw Roxy's human nipples!” 

Gamzee snorts with laughter. Karkat's eyebrows do one of their twisty little dances.

“In case you bulgesores haven't noticed, you have human nipples now too. Not to mention all the Fruity Asshole Skinnydipping everyone's been doing, or the bathhouse, or the whole season we all spent living in the same fucking room!” 

You burst out laughing, partially from relief. It really is kind of funny in hindsight. 

“Grub'll be up faster with another pair of hands, palebro,” Gamzee says. 

Grumbling, Karkat reaches for a knife.

“Tavros,” he says, serious again. “There's something I need to tell you.” 

His tone of voice makes your acid sack plummet. 

“What?” 

“Don't flip your shit, but Porrim located Meenah and Vriska. They're heading back this way.”

You don't flip your shit. You so don't. Part of you is actually very glad to hear she's okay. You don't realize the wooden bowl you're holding has cracked until Gamzee takes it from your hands and puts it, dripping, in the sink. His hands are warm on your shoulders. Your egg is warm against your chest, the pulse of its life getting more distinct.

“Spiderbitch tries any motherfucking shit, I'll be up and getting salty with her. Real motherfucking salty.” The darkness of his tone scares you but thrills you a little bit too.

“I can handle her, Gamzee,” you tell him. You were dead with her a lot longer than you've been with him, after all.

“It's not like she's going to be sleeping on your fucking couch,” Karkat says. “Though maybe we _should_ make her sleep on it. That couch is the single most awful thing I have ever had the misfortune of perching my glutes on, and believe me my glutes have rested in some unaccountably horrible locations. It's like a demented forest giant shat a brick of pure evil, spent the next ten years painstakingly carving it down to only its least ergonomic parts then plunked a couple of cushions on it.”

“I stuffed the cushions with a spun-plastic and despair blend,” you confirm. “We could move it to the Dorms for her, but Gamzee won't let me get rid of it.”

“You made that shit with your own two hands, Tav! Why would you up and want to get rid of it?”

“Well, maybe next winter we'll run short of wood and we'll have to burn it,” Karkat says, philosophically. 

 

*

The idea of Vriska coming home makes you want to strife something. You've been neglecting your practice for seasons. You have absolutely no intention of fighting Vriska at any point ever again, but. Just to be on the safe side. Being alive again makes it a bit harder to let go of being killed. Twice, even.

You and John are surprisingly evenly matched, despite his ludicrous levels of Mangrit. Your practice lance has a longer reach than his hammer, and it's easy for you to anticipate his moves, so tuned into Breath that the slightest movement of each muscle telegraphs through the air. Strifing John had improved your Breath powers hugely, back when you'd first arrived and everyone still bothered to keep in top strifing condition. 

He tries and fails to circle you around until the rising sun is in your eyes. You're mostly able to dodge or redirect his blasts of wind. He's in much better shape than you, though. He and Dave strife pretty regularly and he lifts a lot of heavy things. You tire. Eventually, his practice hammer knocks your lance from your numb fingers. You try to leap up over his next swing, putting all your Breath behind it, but he catches your ankle with a painful crack.

“Crap!” John says, helping you up. “Sorry, Tavros. Got you a good one, didn't I?”

“I'm alright,” you tell him. “Just bruised”. 

You hobble with him over to the well spigot. He unlatches the stop on the windmill which powers the pump and uses a little breeze to get it turning. You drink and splash your sweaty faces. The pump works a few more times as the windmill slows, overflow washing down the drain and into the garden irrigation system.

You collapse together in the shade, feeling the burn of neglected muscles. 

“John, can I talk to you about something?” you ask.

“Always,” John says. Then, running his hands through his hair, “It's not about Vriska, is it?” 

“Uh. No,” you lie, unconvincingly.

John shoots you a little grin. “Sorry,” he says, “It's just awkward, still. It shouldn't really be that awkward anymore, right? Once an awkward dork, always an awkward dork, I guess.” 

You shrug. “Maybe. I mean, it's still kind of uh, embarrassing, and, I guess, painful to think about her. Mostly embarrassing. I don't feel as awkward as I used to. Gamzee helps with that, I think, and Aradia. And Karkat, even. Uh, for me, that is. ” 

“Karkat's been totally hilarious about you two and this whole egg thing,” John grins. “Adorable, even. He's such a mother hen. OH. OH MAN.” 

John bursts out laughing suddenly, for no appreciable reason. 

“Oh my god,” he chokes, “Karkat is totally your mother-in-law. Holy shit, that is hilarious.” 

“Karkat's not any more my lusus than he is everyone's lusus,” you tell John, frowning. You stare at him while he clutches his sides, snickering.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, giving you his hugest, most twinkly smile. “Your mother and father-in-law are your matesprit's lusii. Problems with them are a total goldmine of human comedy. I guess that means me and Terezi are like, your father-in-law? Or maybe that would be uh, Sollux? Quadrants always make things so complicated. Whatever, we are the most hilarious sitcom family. It is us. Our hijinx are the most zany forever.”

You don't understand why that's so funny. “Please don't laugh at Karkat like that, to his face. He doesn't tend to feel like people respect him, and that probably wouldn't, uh, help.”

John is quiet for a while, picking at the grass. 

“Karkat sure goes out of his way to make dealing with him an assload of work, sometimes,” he says. “You get, right, that family means people you didn't get to choose, but you're stuck with loving anyway?”

“Do you feel like you're stuck with him?” you ask, surprised.

John looks startled by the question, too, then thoughtful. 

“We're all stuck with each other,” he says. “Like, there's only thirty some-odd people left in the world, we basically have to be family. But I want to be friendleaders with Karkat. It's important. It's just that he's so prickly. I almost feel like I got to know him better in one day during the game than in all the time afterward. Maybe it's a relationships forming under stress thing, like Keanu Reaves and Sandra Bullock at the end of Speed.”

“Speed?” 

“God, nevermind. Earth movie. Anyway, three whole years of not being able to talk with someone is a long time. Especially for someone you sort of developed a lot of strong feelings about all in one day. Heck, even Dave and Rose seemed different to me when we finally got off that ship and into the new session. Dave was my best bro for practically ever and the first time I ever saw him face to face was after three years trapped alone with my ecto-sister and a weird half-bird copy of him and their relationship problems. That's like, a really long time of missing someone you know? And when we finally got there they'd had all their own relationship drama going on the whole time and Dave was already with Terezi and stuff. Vriska dated some dead me and dumped him. And Karkat had his own whole messed up idea of that one day that didn't match mine.”

John breaks off and bites his lip for a moment.

“Sorry, that kind of got away from me,” he says “You're a really good listener, Tavros. Anyway, that's how I know that the ways we mess with our own heads can hurt us a lot.” 

“Should I still not ask about Vriska?” you say. “I, uh, totally understand not wanting to talk about her.”

“I'm glad I'm not her official moirail for peacekeeping purposes anymore. Talk about an assload of work dealing with someone! Also, she totally ran away with an older woman. There's really nothing else to say on the subject, for me.” His voice sounds teasing, but maybe also a little hurt. Gog, it had been dramatic last winter. “Are you guys gonna be ok? Should we get someone lined up to auspistize?” 

You really don't want to be in a quadrant with her ever again, but having someone other than Gamzee to run interference would probably be safer. Or maybe not, depending on who it was. Maybe you can handle her yourself this time, finally. 

“I don't know,” you say. “I wish I knew, but, uh, things have been changing a lot lately. I feel different.”

“Good different or bad different?”

“Good different, mostly. But weird. I keep surprising myself.” 

“Oh, man. Try waking up with space alien junk and a sudden biting fetish. Or, I guess, in your case the opposite?” 

“Yeah, something like that is basically the case.”

“Maybe try talking to Dirk about it? He's surprisingly good at helping people be themselves. It's a Heart thing, I guess. Anyway, you know we all have your back.”

“We all have your back, too.” 

John reaches over and gives you a manly back-patting half hug. It almost makes you lose your breath again. 

“So, did you have sitcoms on Alternia?” John asks, after a moment. “I bet they were really violent and overcomplicated!” 

“I always thought they were kind of boring. You should ask Karkat about them,” you say. “Uh, actually, maybe only ask about it if you're feeling especially black for him.”

“Oh my god, Tavros,” John titters, blushing. “Did you just tell me to mack on your mother-in-law by arguing with him about sitcoms?” 

Oh, you guess you kind of did. You shrug, feeling your own cheeks heat a little.

“I will never get used to Karkat wanting me to like him less,” John says, sighing. “I don't think I can really do it. It's too backwards.”

You know exactly what he means, and tell him so.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Kanaya strategize; the Thieves return

Everyone is surprised when Sollux only lays one egg. The surprise wanes somewhat when the Life, Heart and Time players confirm that the egg has two embryos inside it. 

The song goes up in the middle of the day, waking you from a restless sleep. It takes you a long moment to recognize Feferi's voice echoing down from the clifftop above. Somewhere in the village, another voice answers. 

Gamzee turns over, blinking sleepily, humming in his chest. You get up, get dressed, and detour to the kitchen for an offering of fish pie. You meet Jane and Karkat stumbling down the cliff path looking wrung out. Gamzee hugs them both but lets them go on their way. 

Feferi only lets you in because Aradia wants to see you.

The lowest level of their tower smells like the ocean. Feferi's big stone pool is empty except for a trace of yellow-tinged water in the bottom. It is bigger than any ablution trap would ever need to be, though only about as deep as a recuperacoon. The jury-rigged plumbing draws and drains from the ocean below. 

You climb the stairs past Aradia's room with her shelves of specimens. Sollux and Aradia are nestled together in a pile that seems to contain every soft item in the entire building, in arm's reach of Sollux's radio bench and the server stacks he cobbled together from the remains of the asteroid's computer lab. They both look half-asleep and they're both smiling. Their egg is a creamy fuchsia with nearly metallic gold splotches.

“Come sit,” Aradia says, holding her arms out for a hug. 

Gamzee places your egg next to theirs as you perch on the edge of their pile. Sollux's egg is significantly larger and much more oblong. Its shell feels thinner and more flexible. You just sit a while, staring at the two eggs next to each other. Aradia holds your hand. You can hear Feferi talking to someone downstairs, probably shooing them away.

“I didn't expect to be so happy,” Sollux says.

“Guess you can't much help second-guessing shit, Solbro, but don't up and let that stop you from getting your wicked happiness on,” Gamzee says.

Sollux tries to make a sour face at him, but it's half-hearted. “Please tell me my abdomen will stop hurting some day. My fucking nook will never be the same, will it?”

“Be good as new before you know it,” Gamzee assures him. “Just gotta let your muscles up and repair their own selves before you give them more of a workout, dig?” 

“Do not tell me how long it was before you started pailing again,” Sollux says. “I really, really don't want to know.”

“You can tell me later,” Aradia whispers to you. 

You sit with them a while longer, sleepy in the mid-day hush. A small smile creeps back onto Sollux's face as soon as he stops paying attention. He pets his egg absently, prods at the open husktop next to him. Aradia dozes off with her head in your lap. The bags under her eyes worry you a little. Her telekinesis is less powerful than Sollux's but enormously precise, making her the first choice for any kind of project that needs stone, wood or metal cut. Her time powers let her see how things will age. She is kept very busy.

Gamzee is due at the kitchens by the time Feferi rousts you out. You wander down toward your house, intending to nap some more. Kanaya and Rose are sitting primly on your porch, waiting for you. 

“I hope we're not intruding,” Kanaya says. “I brought the mountain-hoofbeast wool samples for you to examine.”

The wool is soft, dirty and a little greasy, with an animal smell. It's definitely thicker and more insulating than the fur on the valley hoofbeasts. You wonder whether it would be worth it to try to cross breed them. You're not sure that fur light enough to keep them comfortable in the lowlands would make good fiber. 

Kanaya and Rose make small talk and inquire about your visit with Sollux. Rose explains post-partum depression to you, which makes you even more glad you didn't end up with the full-on crazy human reproductive system. You discuss possible placements for barns or other animal housing. Kanaya's powers seem to give her a knack for urban planning as well as landscaping. You tell them about some possible animals you might try to domesticate, various hoofbeasts, hornbeasts and birds. Jane keeps bugging you to find some steady supply of eggs. You're not totally sure how you feel about eating eggs anymore, which makes no sense considering you used to eat grubs all the time.

Eventually, inevitably, the conversation meanders around to Vriska. 

“If our estimates are correct they will arrive either during or just after evening meal tonight,” Kanaya tells you. 

“We're planning to move the weekly meeting up a day,” Rose tells you. “They really should attend at least one general meeting after being gone so long. And there will be plenty of neutral parties present to intervene should any issues come up. From past experience, we know that it takes a great deal of social pressure or a great deal of underhandedness to leverage Vriska's behavior.”

“Reasoning with her has certainly proved ineffective,” Kanaya says.

“Do you want us to arrange an auspistice for you?” Rose asks you. 

“Like who?” you ask. If you rule out everyone who's had problems with her in the past, there really aren't that many people left.

“Kankri, possibly,” Rose says. “Though he may feel more inclined to deal with Meenah and the fall out surrounding her reappearance. We've already radioed up to the camp, to let Aranea and Damara know about her impending arrival. Both indicated that they were planning to stay where they are.”

You shrug. You hadn't really payed much attention to Meenah's situation. “I'm uh, trying to think of a, I guess, strategy for myself. It's kind of hard because I've kind of tried everything already.”

“I sympathize,” Kanaya says. “It was a great sorrow but also a great relief for me when Vriska died, and I could finally stop strategizing. But, like myself, you have a new base of support on which to build your plans, now.”

“The community as a whole must get involved when one of its members has such a pervasive ability to disrupt its function,” Rose says. “Since culling her is off the table and she is chronically unable to keep a moirail, we have little choice but to deal with the problem through more human methods.” 

“Um, like what?” you ask. 

“Peer pressure. Non-romantic mediation. Maintaining a rigorously neutral attitude when dealing with her. Using the buddy system, perhaps. I hope that you and Aradia are able to help each other through any emotional drama that might ensue.” 

“Please try to keep Aradia from losing her temper,” Kanaya adds. “Vriska thrives on attention and doesn't seem to care if it's good or bad. Any acrobatic maneuvers involving any type of handle will only encourage her.” 

“I hope that we can come up with a long-term strategy for managing her,” Rose says. “With children on the way, the integrity of our social fabric takes on a heightened importance. They will learn by watching her, but also by watching the way that we handle her and the way we resolve conflicts amongst ourselves. We are the seed of a civilization and our actions have consequences not even I can completely foresee.”

You try to picture yourself at the top of a pyramid of descendants, children and grandchildren living in the village, building, traveling. You can't even imagine what might emerge from your egg. 

“I wish there were a way to fix her,” you say, “So she would notice that the things she does aren't actually always good.” 

“If your lusus ate people, if you had to kill every day to keep your lusus fed, the part of you that feels pity would also have died,” Kanaya says.

“Feferi's didn't.”

“She had Eridan doing her dirty work. And her ability to keep Gl'bgolyb calm was the only thing forestalling certain death for our entire race.”

Rose says, “My suspicion is that Vriska does not ever think about the consequences of her actions until after she's taken them. She seems to have little to no forethought, which is incredibly puzzling to me as a fellow Light player. Her reliance on her luck to save her from any and all situations evinces a deeper reliance on her pathologically inflated self-image and a deliberate refusal to engage with reality. She is consumed by the character she has built herself up to play in life. Even though that character is now causing her more harm than good, she cannot let go of it, for fear that she will be unable to function without it. In short, she doesn't know who she is outside of her bad-girl facade, so she fights tooth and nail to protect it. The integrity of her ego will always take precedence over others, or even her own safety and survival.” 

“There is no way to get through to her without playing her game,” Kanaya says. “But playing her game at all simply reinforces its central conceit. Unfortunately, opposing her functions as playing her game as well, because it gives her an excuse to play the victim.” 

“So, what are you planning to do?” you ask. Your hours of lost sleep are starting to weigh on you.

“I'm hoping I can simply side-step her as much as possible,” Kanaya says, looking chagrined.

“Likewise, I hope to keep very busy with things she finds very boring,” Rose says. “Waiting until she gets bored and wanders off seems to be one of the very few proven effective strategies, though depending on her degree of interest, it can backfire easily.” 

“I know,” you say. 

“The very worst thing anyone could do is to give her a reason to hold a grudge,” Kanaya says. “So, please refrain from antagonizing her. Not that I feel I need to tell you of all people that, it's just that we're reminding everyone before she returns.” 

“If I had a better idea, I'd tell you,” you say. “I wish I had a better idea.” 

But you don't.

 

*

You hear her before you see her.

“This planet is soooooooo incredibly booooooooring!” she says, rising petulant note exactly the same as it was when you first met her through FLARP. 

The pair of them saunter into the meeting block, casual as if they hadn't absconded for seasons with the village's best boat. Vriska's pale skin is blotchy with freckles and an uneven tan. Meenah's shirt and jeans have a lot more holes in them than they used to. They're laden with bags and belt-pouches, and Meenah has an enormous dead finbeast over her shoulder, its blood forming a little trail of drips across the floor.

“Oh, hey, I thought I sniffed a shoal of losers. Sup?” Meenah says. “We brought dinner!”

“Oh my gooooooood. You guys have a whole little village to play human house in and you're still all cramped up in this stupid block! It's like we haven't been gone at all!” 

Cronus is the only one who rises to greet them, moving in to give Meenah a hug.

“Oh my cod, Crotimes, what the fuck happened to you?” she says. “You got worms or somefin? Or did you just get fat sitting on your lazy ass?”

She drops everything in her hands and puts them both on his stomach, getting a smear of blood on his kimono. Her face twists in confusion.

“I'm human pregnant,” Cronus says, smiling a weird, dreamy little smile. 

“There's somefin alive in here!” Meenah says. “Wait, what?”

“I'm going to have a grub. Kankri's the father.” 

“Not fucking funny, Crodog. Now, you need me to thief whatever parasite you got growing in your lower digestive tract or what? Since, apparently none of the other Life bitches up in this place can be bothered to fucking take care of you.”

“No!” Conus says, recoiling. 

“Meenah.” Kankri inserts himself between the two, his placating stance well-practiced. “If you wouldn't mind just taking as seat and resting a little while, a reproductive update is on the meeting agenda, along with a report on your travels and some planning of major projects you two might want to get involved in. Now that you're back, I assume you're going to want to find some way to put your variety of talents to use and there are plenty of projects you could make a major positive impact on.”

Meenah eyes the way Cronus is clutching Kankri's hand and not-quite-subtly sniffing his hair. 

“You two get together while we were gone?” she asks.

“We're practically Earth Human Married now,” Cronus says. Kankri rolls his eyes.

“You owe me a finrub,” Meenah says, smirking at Vriska. Vriska makes an outraged noise.

“Fiiiiiiiine,” she says. “Wait a minute. Did you guys seriously schedule us into your meeting before we even got here? You're all in cahoots against us already, aren't you? That is so typically underhanded, not to mention boring. If you're going to be in cahoots at least do something with it other than have more pointless goddamn meetings!”

“Vriska, we merely wished to be as efficient as possible in the delivery of explanations,” Kanaya says. “Think of it this way: we were all waiting for your return so we could begin our very boring yet important meeting with all the necessary parties present.”

“Missed you too, fussyfangs!” Vriska says. “NOT!!!!!!!! Why did we come back here, again? Someone remind me.”

Meenah smiles her shark's smile. “You were the one who kept complaining that you wanted a tropical paradise vacation.” 

“Feel free to leave if our tropical paradise is not to your liking,” Rose says, voice like a blast of arctic wind.

Rose and Vriska eye each other. You swear the ambient temperature in the block drops a few degrees. Or possibly that's just because you're kind of sweating a little. Not enough to need a towel or anything. Gamzee curves his long body against your side as if he's trying to keep you out of sight. 

“Come on, Serket,” Meenah says. “Don't go all cray-cray on me again and get our asses kicked out before we can thoroughly bust some of these chumps' globes. Looks like your Ampora is in a freaky swollen way himself.” 

Vriska takes one look at Eridan and practically falls on her ass laughing. “Both of you!” she shrieks, pointing. 

Equius bares his broken teeth at her. Jane has to practically sit on Roxy to keep her from getting out of their pile. Eridan turns his nose up and says, “At least I've got my quadrants filled. How many do you have, Vris? What's that? Still none? Thought so. Fuckin psychopath.”

“Uncalled for, Eridan,” Jane says. 

“Looks like your quadrants filled _you,”_ Vriska snipes, voice cruel with amusement. 

“Also uncalled for,” Jane says. “Would you mind either leaving or sitting down and being quiet? We actually do have important things to discuss.”

“Fucking shell,” Meenah mutters. She leaves her bloody kill and bags scattered right where she dropped them and marches up to the front of the room. She leans against the wall behind Karkat and crosses her arms. “Let's get this over with, then. Bring out my other Serket and make with the exposition.” 

“Aranea is up the river, still,” Rose tells her. Meenah's face falls. 

Vriska makes a little 'hmpf' noise, flounces over and parks herself right next to your pile. “Hi Taaaaaaaavros,” she whispers, loudly. “Miss me?”

“Nope!” Aradia answers for you. Gamzee growls. You shoosh him. 

“What the hell is that?” Vriska asks, leaning around Aradia to eye up your egg.

Gamzee's growl escalates. 

“Oh, for fuck's sake!” Karkat says. “Serket, do you always have to do exactly the worst thing you could in any given social situation?” 

He grabs her by the arm, hauls her away from you. Vriska shrugs him off, complaining, but goes to stand next to Meenah as if it were her own idea. 

“GETTING BACK TO FUCKING BUSINESS,” Karkat says, “Unless you bulgelickers really like the taste of sweeps-unwashed genitalia, someone is going to have to figure out how to make fucking soap. We are almost out. So, that means strict rationing is now going to be observed. Jane, medical or kitchen use, what's your priority?”

“Medical,” Jane says, “We'll use boiling water to sterilize the dishes. But that will mean no slacking off on the dish crew!”

There is some groaning from dish-crew regulars. Rose says she'll search the library for books on soapmaking. Jade and Porrim volunteer for the project, and Nepeta is assigned to hunt some especially fatty animals. Meenah points out that her finbeast should have some fat they can use, and that sea animals might be a better choice. Rose thanks her for volunteering. Roxy declares yet again that she should be allowed to make a still, so there would be pure alcohol available for 'medicinal purposes.' This results in her arguing with Equius yet again over the amount of metal needed.

Vriska slides down the wall, buries her face in her arms, and pretends to go to sleep. 

Jane and Feferi are called up next for the promised reproductive update. They have diagrams, too, but theirs were made after first-hand observation.

“The egg is just a cell at first,” Jane says. “I'm assuming it's something like a human egg cell, in that it has only half the number of chromosomes it needs. But, fertilization doesn't happen all at once the way it would if there were a sperm involved. My senses aren't really fine enough to detect the process in detail, so all I really know is that the egg feels more and more complete, until it gets to a tipping point and begins to divide. Roxy thinks maybe there are freefloating chromosomes in the genetic material, so it has to collect them one at a time.” 

Feferi takes up the explanation, cheerfully pointing at their illustrations. “Once the cell begins to divide, the egg sac organizes all the rest of the slurry into a yolk and albumin, to feed the baby as it grows! The shell forms last and the mother keeps adding more genetic material right up until it seals itself. As soon as the shell is tough enough, the egg is ready to come out. The whole egg is still soft until it leaves the body. This one here is what Sollux's egg looks like. Two yolks, two babies. That's why it's so big.”

Gamzee kind of shivers, palming your egg in its sling. 

“In Roxy's case, there was no egg released, so her body just expelled the genetic material. Her heat symptoms were much less pronounced than Equius's as well. I'm not totally sure why that is,” Jane says. 

“I maybe have an idea,” you say. Everyone looks at you. “When I was, uh, near Equius, the other day, uh. The smell of my egg kind of counteracted the smell of, uh, him. And when it first happened the way Gamzee smelled made me all, um. You know. So. Maybe. That?”

You sound like a total idiot. Vriska is smirking at you like you've just given her all the blackmail material. 

“You have been spending a lot of time around Eridan,” Jane muses, eying Roxy. “Maybe we can examine the people who spend the most time around eggs and pregnant people, see if there's anything changing. Thanks, Tavros.” 

“We should examine everyone!” Feferi declares, “So we can start figuring out who might be coming into heat next. Would once a week be too often?”

“I think not,” Jane says before anyone can really protest. She gives everyone her gentle, steely 'don't give me any shit' smile. “This will only be temporary, until we get some more things figured out. We should have started doing it right away, actually. I suppose we were all a bit shocked. Meenah, you should sit in until you get a feel for the process.” 

“Wouldn't want these Life bitches to out-preform you,” Feferi says sweetly.

“Hey!” John interjects. “I have a medical question!”

“Okay,” Jane prompts. 

“Um. Oh, how will we tell if the babies are boys or girls?”

There is a beat where everyone looks a bit baffled. 

“Whatever that actually means, anatomically or socially,” Rose says.

“I guess we'll just figure it out!” Feferi says. 

“But how?” John asks, “Trolls had nooks and bulges the whole time right? So I don't really get how you ended up as boys or girls in the first place. How did you know which you were?”

“Well, you were the same as your lusus, obviously,” Feferi says.

“But was that because lusii picked correctly every time, or because gender was a learned concept in troll society?” Rose asks. “There's really no way to tell at this point. Whatever gender selection process we use, it won't reflect on troll or human society accurately.”

“I have a suggestion,” Terezi grins.

“No, we're not just going to flip a coin! Not even if you look really badass.” John tells her, rolling his eyes. “Gamzee, you keep calling yours a girl. How do you know?”

“Just something that feels right about it, like. Anyway, wouldn't be no big deal if she up and changes her mind later, would it?”

You don't see why not. The humans look variously thoughtful and uncomfortable. Porrim looks like she's going to start protesting the second she formulates an argument.

“I suppose it would not be a big deal if we didn't make it one,” Rose says. “Perhaps, even, a coming of age ceremony in which the child announces their chosen gender identity to the group and is applauded for it. We could even go so far as to select a gender-neutral pronoun for children. Or perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.”

“How is this even an important issue to consider?” Kankri asks. “I don't see how it has any bearing on our society as a whole.”

“Of course you don't,” Porrim snaps. “You are the patriarchy, it's you. And the more you deliberately resist acknowledging it, just out of childish contrariness, the more entrenched it becomes! You of all people know how difficult it is to change a power structure that's become entrenched in society! So, if you mishandle this just to spite me, you're only going to be perpetuating the same system of oppression that Beforus had.”

“And Earth,” Rose adds.

“If not creating an entirely new one! Is that what you want? To spawn new systems of oppression just so you can talk about them endlessly?”

“Porrim, you are deliberately triggering me-”

“CUT IT THE FUCK OUT,” Karkat yells. 

It takes a while to defuse that argument and then the one that breaks out over assigning signs and colors. Vriska's eyes bore holes in you the whole time.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a confrontation; a feelings-jam

Maybe it's the little part of you that always pitied her that makes you drag your feet when the meeting finally breaks up. Maybe it's just that the only thing that seems more exhausting than a confrontation with her is having that inevitable confrontation hanging over your head. You mutter to Karkat that Gamzee seems a little upset and watch your matesprit get hauled away through the crowd. You lag further and further behind Aradia, Sollux and Feferi.

Vriska catches you by the shoulder as your friends' voices recede down the beach path. The two of you are alone. 

“Tavros,” Vriska says. She sounds tired, resigned, a little pitiful. You know that tone but still don't know whether she fakes it. “You really didn't miss me at all, did you?”

“I, uh, didn't miss your drama,” you tell her.

“All that time together and you still didn't figure out there's more to me than drama?”

“It's not that I don't know that there's more to you than, uh, that. It's just that the drama never goes away.”

“Aw, did Tavros Nitram just sass me?! I think I might actually be a little proud of you, Pupa. You only said 'uh' once!”

Fuck, you really should've had a better plan before you let her catch you like this. You try to shrug out of her hold on your shoulder. “Can you let me go, please? I'm not, uh, really interested in spending any time around you and I, uh, have a bunch of work to do tonight.” 

Her face is a study in hurt. “Can't get away from me fast enough, huh? Some friend you are. Took all of five minutes out of the game for you to jump on a clown bulge and forget all about me.”

“We hadn't been in a quadrant for practically ever when, uh, that happened,” you remind her. “Or maybe we never were? I think you said that a couple of times. Do we really have to have this argument again?”

She ignores you. “Even went and got him human pregnant, didn't you. As if two murderclowns running around wasn't bad enough.” 

“I'd rather make more of him than more of you,” you snap. Oh man, oh gog, there goes not antagonizing her. 

Vriska gives you a hard look. You feel her pry at your mind. Before you really know what's happening, your own hand comes up and smacks you lightly across the face.

Something in you snaps and your rage is suddenly incandescent. Your vision seems to fade around the edges, leaving only the look of glee on her face dead center, like a target. You blow her mental touch away from your pan like the updraft coming off a forest fire, hoping to burn. 

“TAVROS!” 

Gamzee's t-shirt blocks your line of sight and hands land on your shoulders. Wind whips around you, blowing his hair around his horns. He tips your face up and looks you right in the eye.

“I got this,” he says, quietly. You feel your anger start to release and cling to it.

“No!” you snarl. “Let me feel it!”

Gamzee blinks at you, his mouth a drawn line. He lets go of you and turns around.

“Bitch, what did you do?” he asks, cold. 

“Nothing, yet, clown. Don't you have a date with a pie somewhere? Some nice walls to paint, maybe?”

“Fuck you, Vriska,” you spit. Gamzee puts a hand on your chest and you grab it with both of yours.

“Wouldn't you just love that?” Vriska cocks her hip and winks at you. “Am I making you aaaaaaaangry, Pupa? Finally hate me enough to make a real kismesis? Well, too bad, that ship has sailed. You're even more pathetic angry than pretending not to feel a thing!” 

You could kill her. Not hurt her, not maim her, just kill her as quickly and efficiently as possible. It would be a service to the community. You have never been so angry in your life. A little piece of you somewhere is panicking, trying to reel that feeling back, even as the rest of you is dancing a bloodpounding war dance. Gamzee's hand holds you back. 

“WHAT did you DO, BITCH?” Gamzee half-yells. 

“OH, NO, YOU DID NOT JUST USE THAT TONE, NOOKSTAIN. STAND THE FUCK DOWN AND DO NOT MAKE ME SHOOSH YOU.” 

Karkat is there, suddenly, carrying your egg with the sling all twisted and messy. Terezi is there also, you realize, one hand on her sword-cane, the other on John's shoulder. Aradia drops out of the sky between you and Vriska, blasting grit in all directions.

Vriska looks utterly satisfied to be the center of attention.

John takes a step toward her. 

“Why do you always have to be so cruel?” he asks. 

Her smile falls right off her face. John turns and walks away. Karkat gives his retreating back a pained look, then marches right up to Vriska.

“Don't fuck with my quadrants. Don't fuck with their quadrants. Don't fuck with anyone in this goddamn village because they are under my jurisdiction,” he spits. “This is your very last and final fucking warning. If you set off one more murderous rampage or revenge cycle or even so much as a girly slapfight, I will let Terezi hunt you to the ends of this forsaken armpit of a planet.”

“Oh would you, Karkles?” Terezi sings, “That is so incredibly sweet of you!” 

Vriska pales.

Karkat pins her with his stare, watching as she tries to piece her bravado back together. Then he stomps over to you. He takes you and Gamzee by the shoulders and looks Gamzee intently in the eye. 

“Don't scare me like that, fuckass,” Karkat murmurs.

Gamzee relaxes fractionally and reaches to untwist the sling. The two of you let Karkat lead you away.

*

“Don't even start with me on how I should object to this kinky pale threeway business,” Karkat says.

“Four-way,” Aradia corrects him.

“Fine, fine, four-way. Everybody in the pile. Maybe I should go get Egbert and Terezi too and we can really get human-style freaky.”

“Too weird, Karkat,” you tell him. Terezi would definitely go for it, even if Karkat was asking sarcastically. 

You are still shaking, a little. Karkat's room is littered with his small collection of movies and romance novels, his husktop open but dark on the floor. His only furniture is a small, paper-covered table and a rough wooden stool. His pile is a human-style mattress topped with a scraped together combination of pillows, books, clothing, sheets and more movie cases.

Gamzee clutches you as you sink into it. You've frightened him badly, you think, or maybe he frightened himself. The night outside the window is dim-season black, only one of the small moons shining. 

Aradia pets your hair. Her long nails feel nice against your scalp. Karkat closes the door, cursing lowly at its broken latch. Eventually he just props it shut with a shoe. 

“Somebody start talking,” he orders, curling against Gamzee's back with the egg between them.

“Motherfuck,” Gamzee mumbles, burying his face in your chest.

“I think,” you say, “That this is the first time I've ever been really, actually mad at her. Which uh, sounds insane considering I tried to kill her once, and also all the things she did to me.” 

Karkat rumbles a little, nodding. His eyes are closed and he's working his fingers through the tangles in Gamzee's hair. It should maybe be embarrassing but it's just not. 

“If I were a Time player, I'd go back and smack past me so hard,” you say. “I don't know – no, that's not true I do know. Because being a troll meant standing up for yourself and if you couldn't, you deserved what you got. And feeling like I deserved it – I was already dead practically. It was only a matter of time before I was culled and then she threw me off a fucking cliff and it was _really_ only a matter of time before I was culled and I couldn't even be angry with anyone but myself over it. And then I was actually dead.” The words hemorrhage out of you, toxic and thick in your throat. “I don't know if it was just because I was afraid of her, or, also, because I felt like we understood each other after everything - she liked to tell me about how she knew me better than I knew myself and I guess I believed her. I fooled myself into thinking there was pity there. But she never pitied anyone in her whole life, death and life again. She sees peoples' weaknesses as buttons to push and strings to yank. And I was stupid enough to pity her for not being able to feel pity, when I finally figured it out. I kept hoping she would change into the person I thought she could be and she didn't, ever.”

You peter out, exhausted. Aradia and Gamzee together are squeezing you so hard you have to use a little Breath to get enough air.

“It was all up and being my fault, how you were stuck with her out there in the Ring,” Gamzee says into your shirt. “I thought you went and picked her over me and she turned around and killed you for it. Made me all twisted around in my 'pan till I thought, fine, let them have each other if that's what he up and wants.”

Karkat makes a little shoosh, stroking Gamzee's back.

“I did choose her over you, and it was basically the worst mistake I've ever made,” you say, swallowing. “But I choose you now, and I'm going to keep choosing you.” 

“I ain't no better than her. I up and manipulated your Rage without-”

“You stopped when I said to,” you interrupt. “You let me say to stop.”

Gamzee's arms tighten even more for a moment. You scoot down a little, trying to get him to look you in the face. Your eyes are all hot and watery. Karkat and Aradia maybe don't need to hear this part, but you don't really care anymore. 

“You know, when we came back, the first time I kissed you, I didn't even think until I was already doing it, how you might have changed your mind about me, and how I didn't even know, for you, how much time had passed. I panicked so bad.” 

“I felt it. The old 'voodoos didn't up and work like my Bard shit does here, so I didn't know what all to make of it. And my heart was up and telling me I didn't deserve any such thing as fine as a kiss from your real, live self.” 

“Gamzee. I killed Jade's lusus. Aradia would have killed Vriska, if I hadn't saved her, and then Terezi actually did. Kanaya killed Eridan. Meenah killed everyone in her session. Vriska has killed more people than all of the rest of us combined.” 

“I sent Equius to kill you,” Karkat sighs. “I got Sollux killed in the vast glub.” 

“I really, really wanted to kill Vriska,” Aradia says. “I knew it wouldn't work, but I wanted it to.”

“Ended the entire motherfucking universe,” Gamzee says, hollowly, “Twice.”

“It was a thing that had already happened,” Aradia says, reaching over you to tentatively touch Gamzee's face. 

“So, the ultimate fucking reward was a clean slate, but none of us are clean enough not to fuck it up,” Karkat says. “We've been over this so many times, Gamzee, for the love of little green grubs dancing the troll tango in a filial fucking pail.”

“So maybe none of us deserve this place, but we made it here anyway,” you say. “And the important part is how we're here and together and I love you, okay. I don't care if you deserve it. You don't get a say in whether you deserve it, because I think you do, though you can say what you're okay with me doing about it.” 

Gamzee finally looks up at you. You can feel his bloodpusher pounding in his thorax. It reminds you of when you were awkwardly relearning each other, both afraid to go to sleep in case you might evaporate out of each others' arms back into the Furthest Ring.

“You deserve better than any motherfucking thing I could ever give you,” he says. “Just gonna keep giving you every little thing up in me and hope that up and keeps you.”

“Do not start kissing,” Karkat says. “This is supposed to be a pale four-way, you disgusting sacks of behemoth barf. Why the fuck did I even need to be here for this, again?”

“Karkat,” Aradia says. “You're doing fine.”

“Oh my gog, shut up, ghost-girl. Are you just 0kay with this or are you getting off on it harder than you get off on your pale-pailing shenanigans with fish princess and Mr. Two-for-one?”

“Wouldn't you like to know?” Aradia says, teasingly. She reaches over both of you and paps Karkat on the face. “Too bad you're not pale for him too, though I don't know if he could really handle three of us at once. Not sure how he'd react to you going and getting John and Terezi, either.”

Sometimes you forget just how huge Aradia's globes are. Karkat is stunned silent for a sweet, interminable moment before he starts spluttering and trying to extract himself from the pile. 

Gamzee is shaking again, but you think he might be laughing. 

“New fucking marching orders,” Karkat says from far across the room where he's gathering the frayed shreds of his dignity. “Neither of you is to have any contact with Vriska without a chaperon. Actually, Aradia, I'm going to include you in that one, too. Use the fucking human buddy system or something. And if any of you breathe a word about what has transpired here, I will seriously gut all four of us and cast our steaming entrails into the fucking ocean where they will poison all the bottom feeding pinchbeasts with their miasma of shame and self-loathing. I'll be back in half an hour and you'd all better have fucked off by then.” 

According to your palmhusk, it's closer to an hour later when Karkat gets back, a stack of sandwiches in his hand. Aradia had left gracefully not too long after him, but you are trapped under the snoring tangle of your matesprit. You shrug helplessly at Karkat and squirm a little, making Gamzee's arms tighten around you. Karkat rolls his eyes and climbs back into the pile like he never left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's read this far! If anyone's interested in doing some beta work for me, please leave me a comment either here or through my DW [universe_c](http://universe-c.dreamwidth.org/).


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a conversation with Dirk; a conversation with Vriska

With Jane riding herd on Gamzee and your egg, Karkat takes it upon himself to be your buddy when you go out for one of your walks. You tell him he can only come if he doesn't complain the whole time and scare away all the animals. You're surprised when he actually keeps his complaining to a minimum and even asks a couple of intelligent questions about your domestication project. The fleetbeasts are too frightened to come close, but they're so timid you've only really gotten to know the most reckless of the young males. The heavy, blue-spotted runner-birds are totally fine with him, especially once you give him half the kitchen scraps you brought for them. You catch him smiling at their fuzzy, scuttling chicks. The runner-bird flock is hanging around closer to the village than ever. You expect to find them gorging on the compost piles any day now. You're planning to build them a shelter for over the winter and see if you can persuade them use it. You hope they won't get into the gardens and set Jade and Kanaya on the warpath. 

You run into Dirk and Jake along the river trail. Their lantern casts a sharp LED glow through the trees. Jake is very pregnant, but trooping along cheerfully in his battered hiking boots, his cargo shorts held up by a wide sash tied around his waist. He's got a stout walking stick in one hand and Dirk's hand in his other. 

“What ho, fellow travelers!” Jake calls. “Are we nearing the old homestead at last? Bally fine day for a hike. Most invigorating.” 

Karkat facepalms. “What part of 'someone will fly up and get you' failed to make it through your extravagantly impenetrable skull, English? Strider, as the brains of this operation, I officially blame you.” 

Dirk shrugs. “He insisted.”

“Well, take him straight to Jane. No, fuck, wait. Sit the fuck down and drink some fucking water. Here, we have food, too.” 

“Jimminy fucking Christmas, I'm not infirm, man!” Jake protests, but he lets Karkat sit him down on a rock and fuss over him anyway. You do a much worse job than Dirk at smothering your grin. 

Dirk clicks the lantern off to save the battery as you rest. The night river makes small noises against the steep bank you're perched on and the tall, sheer rock wall opposite. Trees block out the starlight. The yellow Aimless moon peeps down between the leaves. 

“Ran into a certain punky fish babe heading upriver. Gave me a goddamn professional high five,” Dirk comments. 

“Surprise fucking surprise,” Karkat sighs. “Hope no one gets killed if she and Shithive Maggots Megido go for each others' throats again.” 

“I hope the gosh damned waterwheel doesn't sustain any damage in any kind of altercation. I'm given to understand that those two are a pair of very dangerous ladies!” Jake says. “My old chum Horuss would flip his proverbial shit if they bust up his baby.”

“No he won't,” Karkat sighs, “He'll roll over and let Peixes do whatever she wants with him, rot-panned hemofuck asshole that he is. Fucking pushover Pages.”

“Uh, Karkat,” you say. 

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” he grumbles. “At least you two try to not be such useless, excremental fuckups.” 

“I'm pretty sure Megido was planning to fuck off back to the majestic tsundere mountains or whatever,” Dirk says, “Leastways, she was packing her shit same time we were. She wasn't all that happy with me when I stopped her from taking advantage of Ponyboy in his time of desperation. Good thing I had Aranea to help me distract the catgirl from her shipping shenanigans. We had a few good long talks, her and me. Girl has some serious issues.”

“Meulin or Damara?” you ask.

“Both, man. Both.”

“And you continue to be the most competent Strider on the planet, not that that's saying much,” Karkat says. “I was waiting by the radio all week to hear that somebody got their eyes gouged out over his sweaty blue ass. I take it you can actually understand what the fuck she's even saying?” 

“Yeah, man. My Japanese is way better than hers,” Dirk says. “I'll spare you my extensive treatise on the bizarre linguistic implications of that fact for now. I'm saving it until Captor gets the memo boards up and running.” 

You can't help the little groan that pops out of you at the thought. 

“I fucking told Sollux not to bother,” Karkat mutters. “Any server space we devote to it would be instantly full of masturbatory Seer hoofbeastshit anyway.”

“You might be interested to know,” Jake says, “That Horuss and the Lady Meulin have graduated from moirails to future co-parents.” 

“No, in fact I was not interested to know about any such travesty, not that I couldn't have guessed,” Karkat says. “Please excuse me while I evacuate my entire past meal portfolio into the bushes.”

“Well, sorry, chum. All us humans are rather romantic at heart. Thought you trolls rather were as well, in your own way. ”

Karkat pinches the bridge of his nose. “For your information, it's a travesty because if you're in a truly pale romance with someone, you will never ever at any point want to have concupiscent relations with them. Ever. Pale chemistry and flushed chemistry are mutually exclusive, that's how it's supposed to work.”

“Is it?” you say. “But lots of people flipped pale to red in lots of uh, movies and books and stuff you lent me.”

“If you can flip red for someone, it means you were never pale.” Karkat rolls his eyes. “At least, that's what it meant back before all this human non-quadrant shit got all mixed around into a perfectly balanced, nuanced and complete system.”

Dirk chuckles. “When we have these conversations, and I don't just mean the those of us here, but our favorite catgirls and anyone else who likes to go around shooting their mouth off about romance, you know we're really talking about ideals. Like, what should happen instead of what does happen. This shit is never as neat and clear-cut in practice as we'd like it to be.”

“I confess I'm a mite fucking astounded,” Jake says. “Are you telling me that for trolls love and friendship were entirely separate? Like, Strider and I would have to choose between our epic best-broship and ah, more? I'm not even sure I'd want to attempt, ah, more with someone I wasn't friends with!” 

“In Alternian, the word for friend meant the same as enemy, remember?” Dirk tells him.

“Right, yes, so I've been told. And your most heated rival was also your lover and so forth. I do see how a rousing round of fisticuffs might lead to ah, more, but. It's just hard to imagine a relationship being that way all the time.” 

“Don't strain your primitive think-pan,” Karkat says. “You humans aren't wired for quadrants, we get it.” 

“That's the thing that's interesting,” Dirk says. “If, ostensibly, we are all the same species now, and if there are functional kismesissitudes going on that are basically like what they were on Alternia, it would imply that we _are_ wired for quadrants, we just never learned how to navigate them. Either that or it implies that your learned capacity for quadrant-related feelings overrides whatever relationship models would have evolved naturally from our new species' baseline instincts. Not that that baseline necessarily exists or has anything to do with evolution even in passing. I think it's pretty clear from our physiology that evolution has never touched us, though that's another essay for those message boards.” 

“Great. You, Harley and the Lalondes can have a fulminating incestuous academic circle jerk on the subject in whatever server backwater you wrangle out of Captor. I, meanwhile, will be busy keeping this gogdamn community fed, sheltered and murder-free.”

“I've been thinking,” you say. “That maybe you're right about how the uh, difference between troll and human feelings is more in how we talk about it. I think the thing I felt for Vriska was maybe more like the human idea of pity. Like there was always something wrong with her that I could somehow fix.” 

Karkat sighs. “I've said this before, to her face, even. But I'm pretty sure her pan is fundamentally fucking broken. There's probably nothing anyone can do about it. Look at all the people who've tried and utterly failed.”

“I don't understand, why if the game was able to fix my legs, how come it couldn't fix Vriska so she could feel feelings like a normal person and not just have to pretend,” you say.

Karkat makes a rusty little growl in his throat.

Dirk says, “Why did Terezi come through blind?”

“Um. She walked through the Door?” you guess, nonplussed.

“Well, she was still reformatted into a new body, wasn't she?”

“Uh. Yeah?”

“I think it has something to do with the way we think about ourselves. Like, as far as I understand it, you were paralyzed in life, but not in the dream bubbles. If you thought about it, you could change any aspect of being out there, from the environment to your own mental projection. But, Terezi never changed in the bubbles and didn't when we left. So what I think it comes down to is this: Vriska is Vriska because she doesn't have the imagination to be someone else. To change something fundamental about yourself, you have to start with some seed of an idea about how you're going to change, and with a will to make it happen. So, she's missing one of those two things.”

“But if that's the case, then how come I feel so weird and different since we were changed? I have this kind of involuntary urge to, uh, protect people. And that's not a thing that I really ever wanted to do, or thought I could do before.”

“You didn't feel protective of, say, Aradia before?” Jake asks, quietly.

“Not, I think, in the way humans are,” you answer. “Trolls think, why should I protect someone who's already able to protect themselves? And we all had to do that, to think that way and to protect ourselves by ourselves, because there was no one else who would. Aradia was always stronger than me, anyway. Like everyone.”

“Pale feelings, all quadrant-related feelings, actually, involved trust, and maybe for red feelings a desire to help. But there was no such thing as safety on Alternia. Not really. Allowing someone you pitied to rely on you that much would only have left them weak,” Karkat says.

Dirk lets out a little breath between his teeth. “So. What's the difference between wanting someone to be strong and wanting someone to be protected?”

Karkat frowns and looks away. 

“Uh. This seems like an obvious leading question, but okay,” you say. “In, uh, my experience, wanting someone to be strong means hurting them sometimes, and telling them its for their own good. And, I guess, wanting someone to be protected would mean the opposite of that. To want them to not be hurt, even if it wasn't necessarily best for them either.”

Dirk actually pulls his glasses down enough to look you in the eye, his tangerine irises pale in the darkness. His face almost has an expression.

“Both those definitions you just gave me were common enough for humans, too. But that doesn't mean we should just settle for some dysfunctional bullshit and pretend like it's all okay.” 

“Yeah,” you sigh. “I really, really know that by now.” 

“Right,” Dirk says. “Protecting someone can mean hurting them sometimes. Like, the best friend you can trust to kick your ass if you start doing something stupid.”

“Your moirail,” you say. 

“Exactly. I've seen some of that moirail magic at work. It's not exactly a cakewalk, is it? And protecting for us mammals also means caring for people in ways that they aren't able to care for themselves. Like, when all these technicolor eggs start hatching, I doubt the kids inside are going to be scampering off into the woods to raise themselves. That mothering instinct needs to be really strong, because babies are a huge amount of work, mess, lost sleep and general annoyance. If we weren't biologically geared to mother things, our species would never perpetuate itself.”

He glances at you, takes in the way you're biting your lip. He takes his glasses off completely, folds them and closes his fist around them. Most of the humans kind of forget that people can still see them when it's dark, but Dirk never seems to.

“Don't worry,” he says. “The payoff's all in the endorphins. Or so I'm told. Can't say I've ever been around babies myself. We'll be fine, though. Humans raised kids for hundreds of thousands of years with nothing but stone tools, so I figure we can do it too. We should maybe worry more about these poor kids having too many parents spoiling them. But we're getting off track here and I haven't even gotten into nature verses nurture.

“It seems to me that one of the most fundamental differences between troll and human mentalities is the way they react to groups. Humans have a basic drive to keep the social integrity of a group intact, which is why we're so indiscriminately pale and ashen for everyone. Most humans, when faced with someone upset, want to try and soothe them. When we see people arguing, we want them not just to stop, but to resolve the problem so the argument won't reoccur. You guys had quadrants, which limited those feelings to a small, exclusive set of individuals. Whether that was a natural inclination or socially constructed, I can't really speculate. But quadrants are just a way of categorizing these drives into preconceived models of behavior. I think the most important question to ask yourself about any given model, ideal, or even instinct is 'is this useful?' What good do quadrants do us now that we're the monotreme bonobos of Lisa Frank's World? How are you going to use your protective instincts? What goal can they help you reach?”

“Uh, I don't really understand the part about lisa whatever world,” you say.

“Not important, dude. Just another human pop culture reference. You get my point, though, right? You can take the reigns of your own brain, subject that mess of reactions to some thorough, thoughtful analysis. A little rigorous application of logic can get your mental house in order, give you a place to start from, even if it won't make everything magically better.”

“I get it,” you say. “I think, it would be good if that were a thing I could do.”

“Don't go getting all underconfident on me, here. Decide to do it, then do it. There is no try, only do or do not.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up a little and he resettles the shades on his face. 

“Is English passed out?” Karkat asks

“Aw, looks like someone was tuckered out after all,” Dirk says. Jake is drooling steadily onto the shoulder of his shirt. 

Karkat sighs. “Fine. Nitram, you stay here. I'll go find Aradia or Sollux or someone to bring you the rest of the way in.”

“You know I could just-” you start, but Karkat is already absconding down the path. 

“It's at least a half-hour walk,” you tell Dirk, apologetically. “There aren't really any animals big enough to give us a lift nearby, either.”

“I'll just let him sleep a little more,” Dirk says. ”I'm a little exhausted from all this yodaing, myself. But listen, if you ever need backup dealing with psycho-Serket, you can always come find one of us.”

“I don't know if it's really that good an idea for me to confront her with someone else. She gets really defensive if she feels like people are ganging up on her.” 

“Well for fuck's sake at least let someone know next time you're going to get yourself in an argument with her. We heard all about your little run-in from Jane and Roxy. Not cool, dude. Even if your backup is just in earshot, it's better than nothing. She doesn't even have to know we're there.” 

“Besides, old bean,” Jake mutters, “What better second could you have in such a duel of wits than a Prince of Heart and a Page of Hope? Rather, I guess that would be two seconds, but the sentiment stands!”

“Woke you up, did we?” Dirk says. He touches Jake gently, his mouth curving into a subtle smile. 

“I don't think it's, uh, fair to use powers on her,” you say. “Since that's, uh, one of my major complaints about her?”

“We won't do anything without your say, man. Really. We'll just be there in case it goes south on you. I can keep this one in line, don't worry.” 

“I say, Strider, I am perfectly capable of controlling myself.”

“Figure of speech, English.”

“I'll keep it in mind,” you say. “Thanks.” 

 

*

Dirk and Jake are quiet as you walk back to the village, leaving you with your scurrying thoughts. Things shift around in your think-pan as you consider their usefulness. It's not as easy as Dirk made it sound. Just deciding that, say, feeling bad about yourself for no real reason is not useful doesn't actually make it go away. 

But you are suddenly overflowing with words you wish you'd said to Vriska after this or that incident, during each remembered conversation. They're the kind of words that aren't going to stop replaying themselves in your head until you say them to someone.

You find her on the bluff-top path past Rose and Kanaya's tower, brooding and tossing rocks into the water. You grope through the air a moment, making sure Dirk and Jake actually followed you. They're nearby, but you're not sure they're close enough to save you if things really go bad. You stay well back from the cliff's edge.

It occurs to you that you have a pattern of making terribly stupid decisions every time you decide to be brave. As usual, now that you've realized, it's too late.

“Come to apologize and grovel pathetically as usual?” Vriska asks.

“No,” you say. 

She raises her eyebrows. “Then why the hell are you anywhere near me, all alone without your clown or your shouty little lusus or your gothbot moirail? Think I'm actually going to say I'm sorry just because sharkbitch and fussyfangs think I should? Right, soooooooo sorry for whatever the hell it was I apparently did wrong!”

“Wow,” you say, “Apology accepted, I guess, despite the uh, complete insincerity of your tone.”

“That's just sad,” Vriska sneers. 

“Maybe. But I know you well enough to take what I can get. I, uh, heard Meenah left for the waterwheel camp.”

She laughs a little, bitterly. “Leave me alone, Toreadumb. Go back to your human family playtime. I don't need your awkward sympathy. I've got bigger fish to fry.” 

“Having a family isn't actually like playtime, I don't think. It's actually kind of hard and involves a lot of talking about feelings. But it does make me happy, so at least there's that.” 

Vriska rolls her eyes. “So, that's what you're actually here for? To rub my face in your lame quadrants? As if I'd ever be jealous of those freaks!” 

“Nope. Quadrants would actually be easy compared to this family thing, I think.” 

“So, what exactly is your business with me? Since you apparently don't remember, I'm kind of a big deal. Being the biggest, baddest bitch on the planet fills up basically my whole schedule, and you're pretty much just wasting my time here.” 

“Look, Vriska. I get that you don't like being told what to do, but you don't have to be the biggest bitch. You don't have to be anything.”

She narrows her eyes, even as she plasters a breezy smile across her face. “What are you talking about? Everyone's always just waiting around for me to fuck up so they can jump down my throat about it. So, I'm just giving you all what you want, aren't I? Vriska being a huge bitch.”

“No, you're really not,” you tell her. “I'd like it better if you were maybe less of a bitch? So would lots of other people. But that's, uh, not the point I'm trying to make here. The point I'm trying to make is, like, does being a huge bitch actually make you happy? Is that, uh, something you want for yourself? And why? Like, what good does it do you?” 

“I can't help it! I'm just being me. You guys are the ones who get all uptight about everything.”

“No, I'm pretty sure it's a thing you can help. You're the only one who can decide what you do and say and how you treat people. The only person stopping you is yourself. That's what I'm, uh, actually trying to point out to you.” 

“So you think I _want_ to be the hugest bitch on the planet?” she says, and now she sounds angry, or maybe a little sick. She hasn't come any closer to you, standing with her arms crossed, silhouetted against the nights sky. 

“Maybe. Kind of. If it means you're the best at something. There are other things you could be the best at, if you wanted.”

“You guys forgave everyone but me, even your dumb clown.” 

“Gamzee at least tries to fit in and, and to be useful. He feels bad about what happened and everyone knows it because of how hard he works to make up for it. We kind of have to judge you on the things you say and do, since what else are we supposed to go on?” 

“Karkat threatened to kill me.” 

“He was angry. More than usual, I mean. But I don't think that the rest of us would let him or Terezi kill you. What I do think might happen, is you might be asked to leave and not come back.”

“That's what they're talking about doing, huh?” Crap, crap. Now she sounds cold-angry, which is much worse than annoyed-angry.

“No, no one's said that,” you say, quickly. “It's just, what else could we do? Vriska, no one wants to have to get rid of you or even be angry with you. But you're kind of forcing us to do something every time you mess with people and upset them.”

She gives you a narrow look. “Why are you even telling me this? I thought you un-forgave me.” 

“Sorry, I guess I kind of did. Maybe that wasn't fair. I never really give myself a chance to be angry with you before, so I'm kind of figuring out how to deal with that. But I'm telling you this now because even if you are the hugest bitch on the planet, I still think you deserve to be happy, too, somehow.”

She drops her arms to her sides, disbelief in every line of her body. “What do you want me to do, exactly?”

“Stay. Work. Build a place here. Or, if it would make you happier, I guess go back to exploring and traveling. That seems like it would be lonely, even for you. But I'm done with assuming what you might think or feel about anything. I can only go on what you tell me.” 

“Well I'm telling you to get the fuck out of my face,” she snaps. 

You shrug. “Okay.” 

You walk away, calmly, expecting at any second she'll change her mind and drag you back. 

As soon as you're sure you're out of sight, you run.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A distress call; a family meeting
> 
> Trigger warning on this chapter for a brief mention of a miscarriage.

Aradia is livid when you tell her. You don't even tell her the part about how you were up on the cliffs at the time. She takes you by the horn, hauls you across the village and all the way up her tower. She kicks Sollux out of the pile and makes you tell her the whole conversation word for word. You apologize a lot, and point out that no one got hurt. She promises not to tell Karkat you disobeyed his stupid buddy system order, even though Dirk and Jake were technically kind of there. 

“It occurred to me that I kind of keep doing stupid things every time I try to be brave,” you say. “Sorry.”

“Oh, Tavros. It's not being brave, or not, that's your problem. It's that you don't think about things before you do them, sometimes.” 

You tell her about your feelings jam come philosophy lesson with Dirk, Jake and Karkat, and your conversation with Rose and Kanaya.

“I just want to fix things. Not just for me and her, but for everybody,” you explain. 

“You and Karkat both. All you Pages and Knights with your fussy stabilizing and your poor impulse control,” she sighs. “Listen, you are sleeping over with me today. Gamzee can come up too, if he wants.” 

“Won't Sollux mind?” you ask.

“We'll stay in my room. If Sollux doesn't like it, he can go crash at Karkat's.”

“You really don't mind about Sollux's whatever thing with Karkat? I still kind of don't get how that even happened.” 

She smiles a little, settling closer against your shoulder. “When he was in heat and all horny and scared and uncomfortable, he really wanted Karkat there. Of course none of us were really thinking all that clearly. I kind of regret that I didn't go and get Karkat when Sollux asked for him. At least then they wouldn't be dragging this out the way they are. Fef and I knew that traditional quadrants wouldn't ever really work with Sollux, since he always feels two ways about everyone. We've already talked about it plenty, working things out for just the three of us, so it doesn't seem like a big deal to add one more. Back on Alternia, I'd have had to share him with a kismesis, a moirail and an ash trio anyway, right? You and Gamzee are the weird ones, here, with your Earth Human monogamy.” 

“We're... Okay, so we basically are, I guess.” 

“There's nothing wrong with that,” Aradia says. “I think you two are adorable. And it's not like you're the only ones. As long as everyone's happy, why should it matter?” 

“Do you think Meenah and Vriska had, uh, something? They did manage to not kill each other that whole time they were away.” 

“I think it's pale,” Aradia says. “I could have sworn they were waxing pitch around when they left, but seeing them together when they came back...” 

“That would never work. They're way too much alike,” you say. 

“No, think about it. Remember the way Meenah stopped her from going off on Eridan?” 

“Can you actually auspistize between someone and the whole world?” you ask.

Aradia laughs. “Yeah, it's called moirallegience,” she says. “I'd be more concerned how Aranea will take it, except-”

You both jump as a whipcrack of static lashes from the radio bench just behind your head. It sorts itself into a voice, small but intelligible under the fuzz of interference.

“Helloooo?” the voice says, “Yo, is there anyone receiving? This is the Radical Rumpus Adventure Party calling home base.”

Sollux stumbles up the stairs, clutching his abdomen. 

“Augh, fuck,” he groans. “Somebody grab the handset right now!”

You are the closest. You leap for it, fumbling with the buttons as Sollux tells you, “No, not that one, the next one. No, hold it down!” 

“Was that the radio?” Feferi asks, her wide-eyed face appearing in the stairwell by Sollux's hip. “I'll go get Karkat!” 

She pounds down the stairs and you hear the front door slam.

“Uh, Latula?” you say, clutching the handset. “This is Tavros, uh, I mean, home base. Can you hear us?”

“Reading you, barely! Damn, it's good to finally get hold of you suckaz. It has been a long fucking time, am I right? We made a big loop up around the plains, almost out to where it turns into desert. But there was an incident and we decided to turn around.” 

“Is Mituna okay?” Sollux demands. You relay the question.

“Yeah, he's fine,” Latula says. “He was really sick for a little while. That's when everything kind of started to go mad off-kilterz. It's kind of a long story. But he's all better now. Been knocking his fine bifurcated ass out flying us back toward you.”

“We have kind of a, uh, long story to tell you too. Should we call you back when Karkat and the others get here?”

“Nah, we got plenty of battery left. How are you doing little Nitram? You still shacked up with mini-Makara?” 

“Yeah.” You tell her, “We're gonna have a baby.”

“A what?” Latula asks. 

“Gamzee kind of got pregnant, so uh, we're going to have a wiggler. And so is Sollux, and Cronus and, uh, a bunch of other people.”

“What?! Latula laughs. “Are you fucking with me? That would be a pretty radical prank, I guess, if I thought it were true. Which I totally don't. Hang on.” 

She fails to switch the 'send' function off, and you hear some muffled talking, then Mituna's grating laughter.

“Oh, oops,” she says, then, closer. “Sorry, dudes. We're totally psyched for your fakeass grubs over here. Guess I should thank you. We really needed a little cheer-up. Our adventure grindz got totally harshed.”

Karkat and Kankri clatter up the steps. Feferi and Porrim follow in a slightly more dignified manner, half-supporting Cronus between them. You step away from the radio before Karkat can push you. Kankri attempts to elbow him out of the way, and it appears a slap-fight might break out. Feferi reaches over them both and casually presses the button. 

“Hi, Latula! Are you all okay? We've been worried!” 

“Latula!” Kankri says, pained.

“Report!” Karkat barks, “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Whoa!” Latula says, “Double threat! Hey, Blood players one and two! Mituna and I are all right, so settle your tits!”

“I can't help but notice a few individuals were left right the fuck out of that statement,” Karkat says, snatching the handset as Kankri kind of sags against the table. “Namely little miss greenness and light, and that flying piece of garbage.” 

“Harsh, dude,” Latula sighs. There is a staticky pause. The lamplight flickers on the wooden beams of the ceiling, the still bodies of your friends. Aradia gathers you back onto the pile with her and Sollux. 

“The thing is,” Latula says, “They're not with us anymore. Like I said, Mituna got real sick, like, back toward the beginning of last Bright season. So, we had to stop where we were and take care of him. His fever was pretty high and we kind of couldn't figure out what was wrong. And while we were dealing with that, Calliope just disappeared. So Rufioh took off looking for her and didn't come back. By the time Mituna got better there was basically no way we could track either of them. We waited there to see if they'd come back, did a bunch of scouting trips trying to figure out which way they went. Eventually we decided we should leave a message at the campsite and head back as fast as we could for help. I'm not sure anymore how far out we are from your location. We're probably another half-day's flight from the foothills.”

“Fuck,” Karkat says. “Someone go find John and Rose. No, wait. Travros, whisper them, now, and tell them to get over here.”

“Okay,” you say. You push down the heavy hollow feeling in your stomach. You're really getting good at throwing your whispers. You think you could even make it further than the waterwheel camp if you had to. You find Rose and John near the workshops and Breathe the message without even having to meditate. 

“Porrim, is Latula close enough that you can sense her location?” Kankri asks. 

“Faintly,” she says. “They are very far north along the mountains. Rufioh and Calliope are both too distant for me to detect.” 

“Latula, Porrim has your location. Perhaps you should set up a camp and rest, while you wait for us to join you?” Kankri says.

“Yeah,” Latula says, after a pause, “That seems pretty sensible, if you're sure we're close enough for you to find us. Never thought I would say this, but I'm almost homesick for First House. It's been a long, long camping trip. The beginning part was pretty righteous, but now, not so much.”

“You'll hardly recognize the village, when you return,” Kankri says. “We've built a lot. We've missed you.” 

“We missed everyone too. Damned if we'll come back without our whole team, though.”

“Latula, can you tell me more about Mituna's illness?” Feferi asks, brightly. “I think I'll be able to explain it to you. Did he have any unusual concupiscent urges?”

“Um, wow, okay. Well, he was running a high fever, like I said before. And he did want to pail with me but, well. It's kind of awkward when you're camping with two other people. We were traveling on the open plains following this herd of huge hornbeasts at that point, so there was basically no privacy at all. So. We kind of did it once, and ummmm. Like, how do I put this?”

“He retained the genetic material internally?” Feferi asks. You're really not sure how she can sound so cheerful and matter-of-fact when she talks about this stuff, like she's not even a little bit embarrassed.

“Yeah. Call it that. Okay, so that happened. And then Calliope disappeared and that whole business, so we were really upset, kind of ruined the mood and stuff. And after a few days he got better, and then after some more days all the genetic material kind of, came out all at once. It was really fucking weird, yo. But I was so messed up with my party members getting lost, I just didn't really think about it that hard.”

“Well, like I thought, it sounds like he went into heat. If you'd gotten enough genetic material into him, he'd have gotten pregnant and he'd have laid an egg by now. Sollux has one. It's twins. They'd have gone into heat at the same time.”

“Oh my gog,” Latula moans, “That is so totally gross. Shit, Mituna's kind of freaking out. Listen, we'll call you back.” 

There is a click and the transmission goes to static. 

 

*

“All right, people. Train your minuscule attention spans up here because we have some important, literally life-and-death shit to figure out,” Karkat says. He's pacing the front of the big dining block just before dawn meal. Everyone in the village is there, even the people usually asleep at this time of day.

“Like you've probably all heard by now, since this place is an unnavigable gossip maelstrom, Latula and her chucklehead party finally radioed in and told us that not one but two of their number are missing, whereabouts unknown and likely not together. They're a fucking multiday flight northwest past the mountains, and the missing are even further that that. 

“The search party obviously is going to need Space players, fliers, as many long-distance sensors as possible and at least one Life player. But we know that a lot of people's quadrants are involved in this everyone's-mammalian-pregnant-together-hooray debacle. So, we thought we'd ask for volunteers. Every one of you who just opened your mouth, I'd strongly advise you to close it again because I am not fucking finished!

“We are looking at at least a ten day trip, and possibly much longer, so be prepared for a long time away from the lap of dubious village luxury. Also, if you are or have been pregnant don't even think about volunteering - you are automatically banned from this mission. Besides, someone needs to keep this place from falling to rubble.

“So take this gogdamned time to talk to your quadrants and human non-quadrant-whatevers. The official strategy meeting will begin after we eat. And if anyone derails said meeting into more romance fuckery or baby talk I will personally boot them off a fucking cliff.”

He gives you all a final look that's more worried than hard, then walks off toward the food table. The room erupts with voices. 

“I won't stand for you flush-crushing on Pyrope. You're mine, now.” Cronus says, loudly, somewhere behind you.

At the next table over, Roxy is arguing with Eridan, snarling in his face as Equius tries to separate them. John and Dave talk quietly and intently while Terezi hangs all over them. You notice Vriska sneaking out the door.

Across from you, Gamzee picks at his breakfast, his feet tangled with yours under the table. At your elbow, Aradia and Feferi are cheerfully badgering Sollux into eating something.

Karkat drops onto the bench next to Gamzee. 

“Don't just play with it, fuckass,” he says, and tucks into his own plate of fried fish, greens and honey-slathered bread. 

Sollux and Gamzee both eye him, then sullenly start eating. It's cute, really. 

The fish is mellow and flaky, and you actually quite like salad now. You're just not very hungry. 

“Well,” Aradia says, “I'm obviously going. Who else are you hoping for Karkat? You must have people in mind.”

“Would you rather have Jane or me?” Feferi asks, giving Sollux an apologetic look.

“You. Jane's a better sensor but you're better with trauma and injuries,” Karkat says. “Sollux, it's up to you, but if you'll let them both go, I'll stay with you. If you want.” 

“You're not going with?” Sollux asks, carefully neutral.

Karkat shrugs, “I can't fly and my range sucks. There are plenty of decent fighters who will be more useful than me. John's going to head up the search.” 

Your table is quiet for a moment, the buzz of conversation swelling on all sides.

Sollux tugs Karkat's hand up to his mouth and plants a teeth-scraping bite on his wrist. Karkat yanks his hand back, blushing. 

“If you both want to go, I'm all right with it,” Sollux says. 

“Fucking degenerate,” Karkat says, but the snarl he gives Sollux is closer to a smile.

“I expect the service will be impeccable,” Sollux says. Fef and Aradia giggle.

Gamzee drapes an arm around Karkat and gives him a half-hug. “Miracles,” he says. 

Karkat lets himself relax into the hug for about half a second before he sighs and nudges Gamzee off him. 

“Tavros,” he says, “Look, I can't force you to go, but you're one of our widest-ranged sensors and we could really use as much coverage as possible. We also could use your windy thing.”

It hadn't really occurred to you that you should volunteer. “But, I, uh, can't really do the windy thing like John. Like, I can't fly anybody.”

“Rose thinks we should send people up the coast in boats.” Karkat says. “John's team will conduct the search inland, then rendezvous with you for a lift home. You'll also have extra supplies in case it takes longer than we thought. The only problem is that it might be dicey meeting up.” 

“I'm going to be able to track them, Karkat,” Aradia assures him. “Unless, of course, there's some kind of Space shenanigans involved.” 

“Considering offender number one is the fucking Muse of Space, I would guess there might possibly be some of that involved!” Karkat says.

“Wouldn't flying be faster than stupid boats?” Sollux asks. 

“For a flight as long as that, with gear and supplies, I probably couldn't carry more than one or two other people,” Aradia says. “Not over that kind of distance. And we'll have to stop and rest.”

“That's about what John said,” Karkat says. “So, the two of you plus Mituna can take, say, six to nine people, including yourselves. That's three plus Latula, Calliope and Nitram. That leaves three more people max before you start getting too bogged down to make good time. And how long exactly do you think you could keep it up? What if Nitram is hurt somehow and can't fly himself?” he rakes his hand through his hair, angrily. “And if things go to shit once you all get out of radio range, we'd have to send out another search party anyway. That's actually the most important role for the boat team – communications.” 

A little later, Karkat re-explains this plan to the whole group. He's interrupted when Vriska barges back into the block with as much of a dramatic flourish as she can muster, which is quite a lot. She's the best there is, after all. 

“Don't say I never gave you anything,” she says, and starts unrolling her maps.

They cover the entire east and north coast of the continent, including a good distance up every major river. They're beautifully drawn, detailed, and covered in notes on resources, fishing spots, sheltered coves, obstacles and dangers. 

Porrim takes one look at them and points at the exact location Latula's group is camped, not far from a deep river valley that cuts through the coastal mountain range. Vriska marks it with a flourish. She seems astonished when Porrim gives her a hug.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a rescue mission

In the end, you, Roxy, Jade and Vriska are designated the boat crew. Vriska makes the pretty convincing argument that she's the only one who's actually sailed up any of the coastal rivers before. Roxy simply flat refuses to be left behind when Calliope might be in danger. Her lack of good sensing powers bar her from the active search party, though, which consists of John, Aradia, Feferi, Rose and Porrim. 

Gamzee and Karkat are there to see you off. You spend a long time huddled against Gamzee and your egg, as if you hadn't spent the entire day clinging together sappily while trying to sleep. He squeezes you fiercely, then tells you to up and find the shit out of some motherfuckers. Karkat gives you the briefest of half-hugs, slugs you on the shoulder and tells you not to fuck up the mission, the boats or yourself. 

You and Roxy each take one of the mid-sized boats you're used to handling on fishing trips. Vriska and Jade take charge of the larger vessel, apparently now named the 'Imperial Battleship Seafang,' according to the letters messily gouged into its side. You're loaded down with preserved food, water and gear. Assuming everyone gets found, you'll be able to carry them all, barely. You call up the breeze and depart.

Your boats are not really meant for long distance, open-ocean travel. For the first part of the trip, you're able to stay sheltered inside a long chain of barrier islands. You let Vriska lead the way, confident that her desire to show off is sincere. By compromise, you agree to stop for naps at noon and midnight. Usually, you just pull into a little, calm cove, drop anchor and sleep in the bottom of the boat. The late-summer Dim season is comfortable, dry and exactly warm enough to make the constant ocean breeze pleasant.

But the constant ocean breeze and the current patterns aren't actually cooperative enough that you can make the kind of time everyone's expecting of you. And that means using your powers pretty much continuously. It's exhausting, much more so than you'd have thought. After a few days you're falling upon any food put in front of you like a starving barkbeast. At breaks you drop off to sleep immediately and frighten Roxy with how hard you are to wake. When they're unable to talk you out of your constant windwork, the girls stop letting you steer a boat by yourself. This leaves you sitting in the Seafang with Vriska, holding yourself in a half trance while you manage both the sails and the sky. The dome of air surrounding your party becomes as familiar to you as the beach outside your front door, as the draw and press of your own lungs. You find yourself inventing easier and easier ways to coax the winds where you want them. You learn just how subtle a tweak it takes to manipulate even large weather systems. You amaze yourself with your abilities, and with your own ability to push yourself so hard. The giddy feeling of your own badassery plus your new economies of effort help you stay ahead of your exhaustion, barely.

Aradia's search team has long since reached and abandoned Latula's camp when you approach the river that runs inland toward it. There's a powerful low-pressure system bearing down the coast, churning up the waves so they're huge and against you. It's all you can do to keep the winds right around you bent so you don't have to try and tack in high seas. The coast here is all crumbling cliffs, booming with blowholes, arches and sucking sea caves. There's no shelter until you get up to the bay at the river mouth. It is a long day of grinding exhaustion and vague nausea, climbing your tiny crafts over one hill of water after another. To top it off, Jade and Vriska get into yet another boat-to-boat shouted argument about turning up river, with Karkat chiming in unhelpfully by radio. 

“We just need to find a good, stable place to pull in and set up the radio stuff,” Jade yells for the tenth time. “And frankly we're making terrible time today anyway. There's got to be some kind of high ground close to the bay! And at least we can take a fucking break already. Tavros is half passed out!” 

“He can take it!” Vriska yells back. “And believe me when I say this bay kind of sucks. You'd be able to see from the map if these copies weren't such utter shit!”

The set of maps your party has are hasty copies, drawn by volunteers in the few hours before John and Aradia took off with the originals. Some of the panels are better than others, true. But Vriska keeps harping endlessly about how her notes weren't reproduced faithfully, how details have been fudged or left out. The map of this particular river was copied by Nepeta, judging from the cat smiley face next to the x marking Latula's camp and the doodle of a hunting pouncebeast in the area marked 'plains.' 

“Well, that's why we have you with us, duh!” Roxy says. “Tav, are you okay? Can you give us the forecast?” 

“Uh. Sort of? These waves aren't going to get any better any time soon. And, actually, if I weren't stopping it, it probably would start raining. Uh. Do you want me to keep stopping it?” 

“Not if it's making it harder for you. We can take a little precipitation,” Jade says. 

You relax your mind back into the air, see a place you can drop some of your effort. Freed, the heavy clouds drift toward you, trailing veils of misty rain. But there is something off in the distance behind them that isn't right. You let yourself sink deeper, spinning your awareness out as far as you can. There, far, far away, almost further than you can reach, there is a pocket of air behaving strangely. The small eddy is isolated by altitude, its flow not in keeping with the rest of the winds warping up over the mountains. Dimly, you sense the small minds of birds, flying along with the pocket at their center. When you touch one you feel another presence there, charming and warm and attractive. 

Rufioh.

It's very far to throw a sound, especially one loud enough to carry over the wind-howl of flying. You try it anyway. You're not sure it worked until you feel his wind-swirl go dead still, unnatural as a scream in the tapestry of pressure gradients. 

_Rufioh,_ you whisper, though at this distance it takes more effort than shouting as loud as you can. _Rufioh, we're coming to find you. Follow the coast south._

You open your eyes.

“I found him,” you say. You don't pass out, but it's kind of a close thing.

The promised rain is pissing down by the time you finally pull into the bay. Vriska is kind of right about the shittiness of it; it doesn't have a good beach and it's clogged with sandbars from the silty river. But it's better than the open ocean was. Carefully, following Jade, you work the boats toward a calm spot deep enough to anchor them. The smaller boats are made fast to the stern of the Seafang, and the four of you pile into its tiny cabin. 

The wind picks up as soon as you let go of it, slapping raindrops against the tiny window. You try really hard not to fall asleep right there.

“So how far out is he?” Vriska asks you.

“Who?” Jade demands.

“Nitram! Older, hotter Nitram. You said you found him, right?” Vriska pokes you with the toe of her boot. 

You scrape together the energy to answer her. “Far. Uh, I'm not totally sure how far, but almost further than I can reach. Definitely much further than from the village to the waterwheel camp. He's flying, I think. He's not right over the coast, he's a bit further inland toward the mountains, and north. On the other side of this storm.” 

Vriska cocks an eyebrow, calculating. She whips out a couple of maps and starts making disgusted faces at them.

“Oh, fuck me,” Roxy says. “Look at you. Tav, you're a total mess. We can't keep letting you do this to yourself.” 

She starts digging through the food locker, shoves some dried fruit and smoked fish into your hands. You make an effort to transport some of it into your mouth and chew.

“I whispered him,” you tell them. “I'm pretty sure he heard me. I told him to keep coming south down the coast.” 

“Well, at least that's good news,” Jade says. “Really, actually, that's great news! Man, Tavros, you are the MVP of this mission so far. Can you tell if he's still coming toward us?” 

You try to stretch for him, but the low, humming ache behind your eyes balloons horribly. 

“Not right now,” you say. “I uh, think I pushed it too hard, trying to call him.” 

“Well, get some sleep. Get as much sleep as you want, actually. We're going to have to halt here while I find a place to set up the radio relay anyway,” Jade says. “And it's too dangerous with these little boats when the weather's bad. I'll call Karkat and let him know what's going on.” 

“Okay,” you say, and then you pass out just like you wanted to hours ago.

You half-wake more than once and the light is the same dim, disorienting gray each time. When you finally wake up all the way, the windows are black behind dribbling streaks of water. Jade and Vriska are bent over papers on the tiny table, the lamp catching blue and green highlights in their hair. Roxy is snoring sloppily into your ear, wedged up against you with one arm flung up over your horn. The bunk is so narrow, you'll probably knock her onto the floor if you move. 

“Roxy,” you mutter, poking her. She splutters a little and seems to get even heavier.

“Just move her around,” Jade says, “She won't even feel it.” 

It takes kind of a lot of manhandling to get yourself out from under her and she does in fact remain dead asleep through the whole ordeal. With her fistkind-user muscles and seadweller constitution, she's dense and limp as a sack of wet laundry. 

Once you're free, the first thing your eyes land on is a full canteen and a half-loaf of bread. The bread is a little dry but much more rich and filling than the human-style bread Jane used to make. The tree-nut flour she and Gamzee developed gives it a dense, oily consistency almost like the grubloaf back home. You're too hungry to care much anyway. 

“I'm working on a present for you,” Jade tells you. “It's going to be an airship you can power with your Breath. The Zahhaks, Dirk and I are having a little design contest, and then we're all going to build it together! Just don't tell Vriska, she might steal it to go play air pirates.”

“Um, hello? I'm sitting right here,” Vriska says, not looking up from the map she's scribbling on.

“Um, hello? I'm teasing you, fuckass. Don't pitch a fit!” Jade grins.

Vriska rolls her eyes. “Taaaaaaaavros, I can't believe you left me alone with these two crazy humans while you took an all-day nap. Rude!”

“How long was I out?” you ask. You find a piece of dried fruit in the fold of your shirt where you must have dropped it when you fell asleep. You shove it in your mouth. Gog, you're starving.

“Don't choke, Toreadork,” Vriska snickers. 

“About twelve hours. Feeling any better?” Jade says.

“Some,” you say. 

“Good. Roxy went in the water and scouted out place for us to try and land once the weather breaks. Vriska, I'd like to take you with me to set up the repeater. If you're going to be a legendary explorer, you should probably know how to do that kind of thing.”

Vriska glances up at her, one eyebrow cocked. “What exactly does your little radio play set have to do with exploring?”

“Well, duh, you need to be able to tell people what you find! You could circumnavigate the fuck out of this planet and you'd never get credit if no one knew about it. So, obviously, next time you go exploring we'll send you with some relays to set up as you go.” 

You watch Vriska digest this, a muscle in her cheek working. “Fine, I'll help with your little chore, Harley. Since you want me to so bad.” 

“Great! Thanks, Vriska! Tavros, if you and Roxy don't mind cooking, we can all go ashore together and have a hot meal.”

“That sounds great,” you say. 

“There's only one problem with this little jaunt,” Vriska says, flipping her hair over he shoulder. “We're going to have to wait for high tide to make it over the sand bars, and that means we'll end up losing another 12 hours if we can't get in and out fast enough.” 

“Good point,” Jade says. “Tavros, can you still feel Rufioh out there? Is he getting any closer?”

It's almost frightening how easy it's become to dissolve yourself into your sky-watching trance. The storm is disorganized now, dashing itself onto the warm, dry updrafts of the coastal range. You don't sense anyone working Breath nearby so you stretch further, then further. Nothing. 

Dull, throbbing pain reels you halfway back in to your body as you start to overreach. You change tactics and start searching for the minds of birds and animals. No particular patterns emerge and each spark of breath-life-mind you probe feels only of your own touch. 

“I lost him,” you say. “Maybe he's asleep, or just not using any of his powers right now.”

“Well, shit,” Jade frowns. “Hopefully he's resting. He's been on his own for a long while, hasn't he? You rest some more and try again later, okay? Oh, right, Karkat wanted you to check in with him when you woke up.” 

“Uh, sure. Why?” 

Jade shrugs, “Because he's a control freak, mostly. Don't let him pressure you if you're still feeling tired. Aradia said to say hi, too.”

“Before you go running off after Nubs McShouty like his little lapdog, have a look at this,” Vriska says. The cabin is so small you kind of just have to shuffle to the other end of the bench, move Roxy's sprawled leg out of your way, and lean over a little. Vriska has her collection of maps laid out to form one big picture. Your route up the coast is carefully marked, along with numerous scratch-outs, corrections and additions to the existing marginalia. 

“Can you believe whoever copied this one took out all the swear words?” Vriska complains, “I know it wasn't Zahhak, since he was busy on all the radio crap.” 

“Kankri, maybe?” you guess. You don't recognize the handwriting, and all the ink on all of the maps is various shades of brown, black and red.

“Everyone should know you can't just change a map when you copy it! You never know what might be hidden in the details! But I'm just going to have to correct this all by hand, so I guess it doesn't matter.” She jabs her finger at a notch in the coast, freshly relabeled, 'Shittiest, Sandiest Bay Ever.' “We are here, and this circle is about the distance from the village to the stupid waterwheel. So, we know he was somewhere in this stretch of coastline when you sensed him this morning,” She traces a finger north along the coast from the edge of the circle. “Aaaaaaaand this is how we're going to find out just how far your range is! I mean, it's not like you can knock a storm unconscious across universes or anything, but then not everyone can be as good as I am.”

Jade jumps in with some suggestions on how to triangulate his location based on air movement alone. Then, she starts bugging Vriska to help her map how far her own range is. You leave them to their conversation and lay back down again, just for a minute.

 

*

 

Rufioh's trace reappears as you and Roxy sit poking a driftwood fire, turning skewers of fresh fish on the coals. It's the same pattern of disrupted air with attendant birds. It's definitely closer, and it's definitely him. 

“I found him again,” you tell Karkat over the radio. “He's moving toward us. He's still too far for me to really comfortably whisper, though I could maybe make it if he starts to get too far off course.”

“I made the right decision, sending you with the boats,” Karkat says. “Even though it meant sending you with her.”

“She hasn't been that bad,” you tell him. “She and Jade are even kind of getting along, sort of. Jade's pretty good at deciding what to let go and what not to.”

“I know,” Karkat says. “Why do you think I even allowed this whole scenario? What? Okay, fine, here.”

There is a shuffle, then Gamzee says, “I'm all glad to motherfucking hear you're back in action. Jade-sis had me up and worried when she kept telling us you still hadn't woken up. Don't be trying to outdo a motherfucker when there ain't no reason to up and compete.”

“I'm not trying to outdo anyone but myself,” you tell him. “But, uh, I guess I did let myself get a little carried away. It's just that I didn't know I was strong like this, Gazmee. I controlled a whole storm for almost a day. And Rufio heard me almost farther away than I can sense.” 

There's a long moment before Gamzee comes back with, “Well, if that ain't motherfucking amazing Tav. You'll have to up and show us when you get back.” You can hear Karkat swearing behind him. 

“I miss you,” you tell him. 

“Miss the fuck out of you too, motherfucker - me and our girl and all us back home,” Gamzee says. “Did you hear them Hope motherfuckers up and had them some eggs?”

“Did they? Everyone's all okay and stuff?” 

“Yeah. My chef-sis up and took charge of all them scared motherfuckers. Made shark-sis up and get her help on and every little thing.” 

“Helloooooooo! Is this piece of shit working yet?” comes over the channel. 

“Uh, hi Vriska,” you say. “Can you hear us?”

“We're reading you at home base, Serket,” Karkat says.

“Finally! Tavros, you'd better have that hot meal you promised ready when we make it back down there!” 

“God, Vriska, let me just- hey!” you hear Jade say, then, “Karkat? Tavros? We do have both of you, right? Good! Ah, we really should have coordinated with Aradia to test the relay for their channel too. Well, we'll just have to do it next time they check in. Okay, heading back down now!” 

“Sorry, Gamzee,” you tell him. “It's uh, really good to talk to you. We're all getting along fine, really, so don't worry or anything.” 

“You know I don't ever up and get my fret on if I can motherfucking help it,” Gamzee says. You hear Karkat calling him a miserable nookwhiffing liar in the background and a laugh you think is Sollux. “Anyway, I up and need to go get my bake on. Talk to you next time, Tav. Motherfucking love you most.” 

“You too,” you tell him. 

Karkat spends a few more minutes admonishing you not to lose Rufioh. You double check and reassure Karkat that he's still in your range, then sign off. 

Jade teleports herself and Vriska onto the muddy notch of a beach with a little crack of displaced air. 

“Goddamn,” Vriska says, swaying. “That is so totally nauseating. And like, literally, not just like your chirpy smiley face makes me kind of sick.” 

Jade slaps her heartily on the back. “You did great! Most people puke their first time!” 

“Oh,” Vriska says, and drops cross-legged by the fire. 

“Your hot meal, Marquise,” Roxy says, waving a skewer of fish at her. 

Vriska flips her off with the hand that's not busy massaging her forehead. 

“Any change with Rufioh?” Jade asks. “How long before he's in whisper range, you think?” 

“Well,” you say, “He's not flying super fast. He's probably pretty tired. His Breath is kind of uh, I guess, limp-feeling. Like when your muscles are about to give up on you. So, under his own power, it would take him probably all day to make it into range. The more I rest, uh, the farther I'll be able to push my range out, though, too.”

“So, okay,” Roxy says, “We've only got about half an hour to move the boats back past the sandbar. So either we pack this picnic up right now and hop to it, or we decide we're taking an extended break.” 

The radio crackles to life with a jumble of cursing. Then Meenah moans, “Oh my glubbing cod, Serket, you there?” 

Vriska grabs for it. “Holy shit, Peixes. Can you maybe try to remain firmly on the handle for once in your damn life?”

“No I glubbing can't. Serket, these eyes have sean things they ain't never gonna unsea,” Meenah says.

Vriska rolls her eyes. “I vote we leave,” she tells you. She stalks off into the rocks with the handset, gesticulating as her voice rises and falls. 

“Look,” Jade says, “Those breakers are still pretty big out there. And I really should stay until I make sure the repeater is going to resend Aradia's broadcasts correctly. So, I vote we wait.” 

“What if we just move the boats back to anchor, but don't plan to leave until the weather calms down?” Roxy says. “We'd have to swim for it, getting back and forth, but you guys can take it. The water's not even that cold.” 

“The four of us can all fit in one of the small boats and we'd be able to portage it over a sandbar if we needed to,” you say. “As long as the Seafang will be alright moored out there by itself.”

Roxy smacks herself on the forehead. “Duh! Should have just done that in the first place. Tavros, speak up next time!” 

“I, uh, just thought of it now. Sorry.”

“Ohmigod, why do we suck so hard at all this maritime adventure business? Shh, wait, don't tell Vriska I said that.”

Vriska stomps back over looking pale and troubled.

“How come none of you jackasses told me what was actually involved in this whole human pregnant deal?” she demands.

“Uh, I'm pretty sure you were there at the meeting where they explained it in, uh, plenty of detail,” you say. “Maybe you were kind of tired, since you'd just gotten back?”

“Oh, whatever, Vriska,” Roxy says. “There's no reason to get all dramatic about it, it's perfectly natural. Parts of it are even pretty fun!” She waggles her eyebrows. “Now are we going to shift our asses and scramble those boats or what?” 

You shift ass and scramble the boats. Your fish is cold by the time you get around to eating it, but you don't honestly care. You decide to sleep for the several hours you delay leaving, rather than endure Vriska's complaining. You're grateful for every moment of blissful unconsciousness. When you wake up again, it's very quiet. The low boom of waves breaking on the sandbars has stilled to a distant shoosh. You are alone in the cabin and can't hear any arguing anywhere. You wonder if the girls have all gone in to shore. When you emerge into the predawn moonglow, you find Vriska is sitting alone in the bow, staring off over the water. One of the small boats is parked over at the sandbar, the other still tied up at the stern of Seafang. 

You leave Vriska to her brooding, prop yourself against the rail and let your windsense expand. Finally, your power is recovered enough and Rufioh's Breath is close enough that you can touch it directly. He's moving along low to the ground, his bird companions spread out in a search pattern. You think he's maybe looking for a place to land for the day. 

You whisper _Rufioh!_ and touch the bird flying closest to the center of his little air pocket. You feel his surprise as he senses you, filtered through its small mind. His flock becomes disorganized for a moment, then executes a sort of synchronized dip, like a nod. 

_Once for yes, twice for no,_ you whisper. _Are you hurt?_

Two dips.

_We're sailing up the coast to meet you. Are you able to keep flying on your own?_

One dip. 

_Did you find Calliope? Do you know where she is?_

One dip. 

“You're talking to him aren't you?” Vriska says. 

You startle back into your body. She's crouched right in front of you, looking at you intently.

“Well, I was,” you say. 

“Your little whisper trick is one-way, right?” Vriska says. She taps you on the forehead. “If you let me in, I can listen to his thoughts for you.”

“I, uh, don't really want to let you,” you say. “I was doing just fine on my own.” 

“Fine,” she says. “Don't let me help when I come crawling to you offering myself up like some kind of loser.” 

“Vriska, you've helped in lots of other ways so far,” you tell her. “That's like, the opposite of being a loser, I think.”

She rolls her eyes, then gets up and walks away. “No skin off my back, Toreadumb.”

You settle back into your trance. You'll get as much information to and from Rufioh as you can your own way.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rufioh found; a journey home

You make it several bays further up the coast as Rufioh diverts his flightpath away from the mountain updrafts, across the crumbly hills toward the sea. You anchor in a bay which Vriska's map labels as 'Weird Huge Fucking Column Things.' This is entirely accurate and an excellent landmark, the columns tall clusters of geometric crystallized lava. 

The first thing you think when you sight him, coppery wings translucent against the blue-purple sky is 'finally.' Then, you wonder if you could have reformatted with wings, too, if you'd just believed in it hard enough. You decide being jealous isn't useful, but you still kind of are anyway.

You calm the winds to nothing to let him maneuver in to the deck of the Seafang. He drops out of the air practically into your arms.

“Bangarang,” he says.

“I think that that is, uh, a true statement,” you tell him. 

He grins, then laughs a little. You can feel the strange shifts of the muscles that move his wings as you half-support him. He's taller than you, and stronger. His horns are really preposterously wide, and it makes you wonder if yours will get that big someday. Standing next to him reminds you of just how young your physical body still is. You never feel that young, so it's easy to forget.

He lets Jade and Roxy hug him, appearing graceful about it in a way you never manage. 

“Fff- Wow. Thank you dolls for picking me up,” he says. “It's been a pretty crazy trip.”

You quickly discover that his wings and horns make him take up the whole cabin. He seems happy enough to sit down outside, though, especially once he's got food and water in his hands. His mohawk is bedraggled, the red dye grown out and faded. Birds land on the railing behind him and he feeds them bits of his bread. 

“They flew with me a long way,” he explains. 

Roxy fidgets around, then says, “Where is she? Can we get close from the water? Why isn't she with you?”

“Whoa, doll,” Rufioh says, “Calliope, you mean? Sorry, I guess I should make with the storytelling. Yeah, I found her. After she split, I was flying all over trying to use Breath to find where she was at. The plains are real big and empty out there, so it seemed like it should be easy, except it kind of turned out to be, uh, not. But then off in the distance there was this real big sort of hill. So I thought, sure, maybe she headed toward that. Only landmark in the whole place. When I got up close it was this huge rock with all these crazy buildings sticking out of it.”

A chill prickles at you. “Buildings?” you ask. Jade puts a hand to her mouth.

“Yeah. Gray ones just kind of sticking out all over. I thought, if I didn't know better, I'd say that was a piece of the Veil. Kind of gave me the creeps. But I could feel by their Breath that there were people in there. Had to yell bangarang real loud to get up the nerve to go look around. Then I found Calliope and Kurloz, up in this weird round tower.”

“Kurloz was there?” Roxy asks. “But wasn't he, like, off somewhere in the woods being a religious clown hermit or something?”

“Crazy, right? I have no idea how he even got all the way there by himself. But he was just hanging around all silent and sh-t like he usually is, and carrying around this big egg. That part was kind of almost cute, you know, like he had a sweet fiduspawn he was going to hatch and take care of. Anyway, he's basically impossible to talk to and Calliope wouldn't leave him there by himself. So I thought I better go back and find Latula. But, uh, the thing was I kind of lost track of how to get back to them. I guess I'm just not as good at adventuring as people might think. So, I thought if I just kept going down the coast, I'd eventually get back to the village.” 

“Well, fuck,” Jade says. “We need to get on the radio to Aradia and let them know.” She hustles off to get the handset.

“I've got news for you, Mr. Slightly-cooler-but-not-all-that-much Nitram,” Vriska says, pointing dramatically. “If that egg was about this big, that wasn't a stupid fiduspawn. It was a goddamn clown wiggler egg he fucking spat out his creepy mime nook!” 

“Whoa, what?” Rufioh says, holding up his hands. “No one said anything about that! Uh, not that I guess he would say anything about it. That just seems like like, whoa. F-ck.”

“The probability is so far through the roof it's about to hit the seventh gate!” Vriska says. “Ask lameass-you. He knocked his clown up, so he knows all about it.”

Rufioh looks at you like he's waiting for you to say it's a joke. 

“Uh.” You blush. “That's, uh, a thing that's true. About Gamzee, and uh, me. He thinks she's going to be a girl when she hatches.”

Several expressions pass over Rufioh's face. 

“So, like troll madararui? Except, I guess, whatever we are instead of trolls? That's... crazy.”

Roxy bursts out laughing. Vriska rolls her eyes. “I don't know why you bother with your stupid troll anime references. That hoofbeastshit doesn't even exist anymore. No one even knows what you're talking about, and no one ever will!” 

“Can it you guys!” Jade says. “We have more important stuff to do right now than argue.” 

“Hi everyone!” It's a little hard to tell over the radio, but Aradia sounds nearly as tired as you are. “Rufioh, we're very glad to hear you're okay!”

“Oh, hey, little Megido, is that you?” Rufioh says. “I'm all safe and sound thanks to my boy Tavros and his crew.” 

“Hi Aradia,” you say. “How are things on your end?

“We're finally getting somewhere, I think,” Aradia tells you over the radio. “Porrim's been working on tracing Calliope, since she used her Space thing to cover her trail. She's with Mituna and Latula. Fef, John, Rose and I have been tracing you, Rufioh, but it's been kind of a mess! You criss-crossed all over the place in a whole bunch of circles. It's taken us a while to unravel.”

“She covered her tracks too well for me to sense her Breath,” Rufioh says. “So I started trying to fly a search pattern and ended up getting lost. Sorry.”

“Oh, gosh, don't apologize! We were just starting to converge on the same direction as Porrim, finally, but now we have you to tell us what we're looking for.”

“When I left they were camped out in a big tower on top of a round rock covered in buildings. Looked like a Veil meteor, if you ask me, but that just seems. You know. Crazy.” 

“What do you mean they?” Aradia asks. 

“Kurloz is there with her,” Rufioh tells her. “That's why she wouldn't leave with me.”

“And he has an egg!” Vriska says.

There is a long pause.

“I'm sorry, did you just say you found a Veil meteor?” Rose says.

“It couldn't really be, right? It was all sticking up out of the plains like it was just set right down there. Not really much of a crater or anything.”

“That is somewhat disturbing news. But at least it should be easy to spot. What general direction do you think it was from the place where you lost Calliope?” 

“North and east, closer to the mountains,” Rufioh says.

“Egg or not, Kurloz's presence does not significantly alter our plans. We will simply have to bring them both back with us. We have sufficient flying power to do so. I just hope no further complications arise. We'll check back in when we have something new to report,” Rose says.

*

You sail as far inland as you can, navigating up a narrowing sound that becomes a wide river canyon. The rocks are banded in brown, white and black. You stay well back from the crumbling edges. Eventually, the river gets too shallow for the Seafang. You can hear the roar of rapids somewhere ahead, around a bend in the canyon walls. It forms a constant background noise not unlike breaking waves or the soft static of the radio.

You wait there for a full day and night before you feel John's Breath punch into your field of perception like a starship diving into the atmosphere. The whole lot of them appear over the canyon rim and their shouts echo around the rocks so much you can't make out anything they're saying. 

Kurloz is with them. His lack of face paint and plain black clothing are somehow weirder on him than his skeleton outfit. His egg is pale red with indigo blotches. Rose has provided him with a length of fabric to tie it to himself with, and the entire effect makes him look so much like Gamzee you can barely stand it. Calliope is even more gaunt than you remember, her prominent cheekbones knife sharp and her huge green eyes shadowed.

“I'm sorry to make you go through all this trouble,” she says. “I wanted to keep you all safely away from that place. But I felt I had to go. And, I suppose, I was maybe hoping to see. Someone.”

“By someone, you mean your brother?” Rose asks, gently. Calliope gives Rose a frightened look, and nods.

Roxy pulls her into a hug, smoothing her lusus-white hair around her wavy horns. “Oh, Callie, why would you want to see him? What if he tried to hurt you?”

“I would like to believe that he would not hurt me. He is my brother, though our relationship was rather complicated and contentious. Besides, if he is as changed as I am...” she trails off, reaching up to touch her hair and horns as if to reassure herself they're still there.

“You're the one who found him, aren't you,” Vriska sneers at Kurloz. “Is that where you got that thing?”

Kurloz makes no move to confirm or deny her accusation. He simply stares her down, one arm wrapped around his egg.

“We'll have plenty of time to think about all of this as we make our way home,” Rose declares. “For now, let's get everyone settled and get underway.” 

You regroup as best you can, crowded onto the overladen Seafang. Rose and John come up with a rota to keep the small boats crewed day and night. Feferi checks everyone over, then checks Rufioh again, then checks you and John again. She frowns. 

“What?” you ask.

“Nothing, yet. You don't feel weird at all, do you?” 

“Mostly just tired,” you say. 

“Well, now that we're all together, everyone should be able to get more rest.”

She's right. With both Rufioh and John, your weatherwork is suddenly easy. John is a nucleus of heavy-handed push and pull, Rufioh's touch runs toward pinches and swirls and playful inversions. Your senses soar above both of them, your subtle nudges smoothing the edges of their influence, blending it into the air's natural patterns and tweaking them just so, to send the best winds inward. You are a juggernaut of good weather, the overladen boats making insanely good time down the coast. 

“The three of us together could stop a freaking hurricane,” John says, grinning. 

“I, uh, wouldn't really want to if it wasn't an emergency,” you say “Like, what if we divert the rain inland and then the river ends up flooding out of season or something? There are kind of a lot of variables and stuff that uh, might have unintended consequences.” 

“We wouldn't have to divert the rain inland, that's just silly. Obviously, we'd shunt it back out to sea.” 

“But it won't uh, get smaller or anything if it stays over the warm water.” 

“So? As long as it's not near us, why would it matter?”

The conversation devolves into a minor argument and ends up with Vriska yelling at John for drawing on her maps. 

You sail day and night, stopping occasionally to swap crews on the small boats. It would feel almost like a floating party, if it weren't for the deep bags under everyone's eyes, the specter of the mysterious Veil meteor, and the unsettling presence of Kurloz and his egg of unknown origin. 

Calliope and Roxy are joined at the hip while Vriska and John kind of dance around each other awkwardly. Feferi and Aradia share little moments and touches that leave Rufioh and the other Beforans shaking their heads.

“Still just kind of hard to believe a Peixes and a Megido could get along like that,” Rufioh explains when you ask.

Mituna is kept well away from the cabin where Kurloz is sulking as if he's under house arrest. Calliope, Jade, Latula and Feferi take turns checking on him. You avoid him as best you can, because you find him deeply creepy. They look nearly identical, yet he has none of the warmth, humor or casual good naturedness that draws you to your matesprit. You can't help but blame him a little bit for some of the things Gamzee feels so guilty about. Though, on the other hand, you know a lot of the Beforans blame Gamzee for things Kurloz apparently did. You don't know if you really want to know all the details. 

You and Aradia aren't able to get enough privacy to have a good feelings jam until you spend most of a night in one of the small boats with Roxy dead asleep in the bow. Aradia retells you the story of their long flight, endless hours of surveying the grasslands, following the phantom trail of Rufioh's past. You tell her how well you've been dealing with Vriska and how far your powers have expanded.

Rose, Calliope, and Aradia spend a worrying amount of time huddled together in one of the small boats, talking intently. You get to talk to Gamzee on the radio a couple of times, and he's all you can think about for hours afterward, remembered conversations and moments good and bad unrolling themselves through your brain. You submerge yourself into the sky as a distraction.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> homecoming

The village is beautiful as you finally pull around the bluffs, past the breakwater and into the bay. The dock is repaired, but loaded with so many people it sits low in the water. You think you recognize the short, gray-clothed figure trying to shoo people back off it. As usual, no one seems to be listening to him. There is a lot of spastic waving going on on both sides. Eridan and Meenah splash up next to you, racing along beside the Seafang, exchanging barbs and catcalls with Roxy and Vriska.

“Hey John, I dare you to kiss Karkat on the docks just like a World War Two soldier returning home to his classy dame. He'll never see it coming,” Jade says, elbowing him.

John giggles. “You're right, he totally wouldn't! Haha, that would be both poignant and hilarious.”

At the dock, John swoops out of the boat with the bow line and ties you off. Then he whirls around, plasters his lips to Karkat's and dips him low. Karkat fights it for several seconds, and then his fists stop yanking on John's hair and start holding him in place. Suddenly the kiss is kind of, uh, intense for a PDA. There is a smattering of laughter and people whistling or yelling encouragement. 

You're starting to hand people and things up out of the Seafang by the time they break apart. 

“Do we need to get you home, Egbert?” Karkat breathes. 

“Maybe,” John says, wide-eyed. 

“Thought so,” Feferi comments. She hops up onto the planks laden with bags and brushes by them.

“Strider, you're going to have to field this one for now,” Karkat says, propelling John gently into Dave's chest. “I need 'Rezi with me while we sort these truant assholes out.” 

“Hi Dave,” John says, and kind of melts against him. Dave's nostrils flare and his eyebrows go up over his shades. “Wait,” John says, shaking his head a little. He grabs for Karkat's shirt. “No. We have friendleader stuff. That's important.” 

Karkat looks at him with familiar, exasperated affection and opens his mouth to argue. Terezi interrupts, appearing suddenly with Sollux's egg in tow. 

“Ah! Mr. Bodacious Blue Slime Aneurysm! Here, I have something for you.” She deposits the egg into John's arms and starts messily wrapping its sling around his shoulders. Karkat jumps in, grumbling, to tie it off correctly. Sollux himself is sandwiched between Aradia and Feferi a little ways off, and thoroughly distracted.

“This is why I keep you around, Pyrope,” Karkat says. She cackles merrily and licks a stripe across John's face. 

“Gross,” he laughs, wiping it on his sleeve. “Wow, that really helps! Gosh, this one is so big. I always forget how big it is.” 

Karkat levels a speculative eye at you, then stalks off down the dock calling for Kankri. He stops Gamzee to say a few words to him and Gamzee, your Gamzee, there he is, finally. 

When he sweeps you into a crushing hug, something in you loosens and tightens all at once. He smells like bread and seaspray, sweat and home. You're struck with an echo of an echo of an ache for him, and you feel suddenly how it could blossom and twist until he is the only thing that could soothe it, until you have no choice but to open yourself up and get him as deep inside as you can. 

You devour him with your kiss, nipping and clinging and loving the way his big hands run through your hair. Vriska yells at you to get a nice handfull of his skinny clown butt and you do, not because she told you to but because it's a great idea. He laughs into your mouth, and then you're laughing together and swaying like you might lose your balance if he weren't holding you up. 

Oh man, oh gog. You think you know where this is going. 

“Tavros,” he says. “My miracle brother.”

And then he freezes against you, his long body gone tense as a fleetbeast poised to leap.

Kurloz is on deck, coaxed along by Calliope and Roxy, his egg cradled in his arms. Gamzee's face is sort of blank in a way you really don't like. 

“Hey,” you say, tugging at him. “Where is she? I want to say hi.” 

He looks down at you, slowly, and his grin breaks back through his still mask. He pulls you off down the dock by your hand. 

Jane has your egg and she smiles fondly at the two of you as you ramble up. Equius is at her side, the roundness of his pregnant belly oddly proportionate with his huge frame. He's also got an egg secured to his chest, pale blue marbled with thin pink swirls and violet speckles.

“Makara, Nitram,” Equius says and he sounds not just polite but shockingly warm, or maybe just happy.

“Welcome back,” Jane says. “We hear you did a great job.”

She hands your egg to you, and the safe-soft-warm smell of it shuts off the ghostly near-ache in your nook. You guess you weren't imagining it, then. Crap.

“Uh, Jane, can you uh. Look and tell me if, uh, I'm. Maybe. Coming into heat?” 

Gamzee draws a sharp breath beside you. Jane nods. “Of course,” she says. 

She passes her hands over you, lingering over your lower abdomen. Gamzee chews his lip while he watches her.

“Gosh,” Jane says. “Your reserves are really depleted down to nothing. I'm actually a little surprised to see your hormone levels rallying as much as they are. But, yes, I do think it will come on as you rest, unless you keep in contact with your egg. You were right about the pheromones they put off. Karkat and Kankri got through their heat while you were gone, and we were able to confirm the way pheromones can suppress the cycle or induce mating urges.”

“Neither of them looked pregnant,” you say. 

“That's right,” Jane says. “I must admit it's a relief to have at least that much control over family planning. I hope for your sake, Gamzee, that you're not always the first to come into heat. It would seem pretty unfair if you were the only one who didn't have some kind of option for dealing with it. Not that there have been any particularly terrible consequences to any of the unplanned pregnancies so far.”

She squeezes Equius's hand. He clears his throat and lets his curtain of blue-black hair fall across his face. 

“I, uh, kind of feel like one baby is enough for the first time,” you tell Gamzee. “Is that okay?” 

“'Course it's okay, motherfucker. Don't be up and giving me them big wobbly eyes like I might not give you any little thing you ever wanted.” 

“Thanks,” you tell him. And then Roxy is dragging Calliope and Dirk up to the four of you, and you're whirled away to First House, where a truly magnificent feast is laid out and waiting.

*

Dinner is loud and chaotic and an almost unbearable relief. Everyone is there. Horuss has been dragged away from his waterwheel, sweaty and pregnant and pointedly not looking at Rufioh even once. He gets into an argument with Meulin that starts her shrieking, but Jade and Nepeta take her off and calm her down. Kurloz sits silently in a corner. Damara hangs around him smoking and staring creepily at Calliope, Rufioh and Horuss by turns. Meenah and Vriska get into a fist fight and are immediately dogpiled and pulled apart by Karkat, Aranea and both Striders. Five minutes later the two Thieves are hanging all over each other, singing drunkenly in an attempt to drown out a Kankri-Aranea double-team lecture of doom. 

You, John and Rufioh are equipped with eggs at all times. Rufioh sits with Kankri and Cronus, looking bemused by their coupley antics. John starts off with Sollux's egg still in tow, but later you see him with an orange and green one that must be Jake's. Your own egg is a burden you missed and some part of you seems to be touching Gamzee at all times. You get a lot of hugs, and give out a few yourself. The food is amazing. You eat until you feel like you might die.

Jane tries twice to announce that dessert will be served in the meeting block. Roxy gets up on top of a table and announces it again. You can only hear her over the din because you're sitting at the table she's standing on. She shrugs and your whole group just gets up and starts filtering out. 

The meeting block has even more pillows hanging around than usual, like someone raided the Dorms for every soft thing available. Even so, it's not enough to accommodate all thirty-odd of you in reasonable piles. Your pile ends up more than half people, Aradia and Gamzee snuggled up on either side of you with Sollux and Feferi curled nearby. Karkat forms a pivot with the John-Dave-Terezi pile. Rose and Kanaya lean together elegantly, talking softly to Dave. People straggle in in clumps and pairs until the room is ringed with a string of cuddly groups and soft conversations. Roxy comes around with bottles of wine and a huge stack of wooden cups. Jane hands out cookies loaded with candied fruit and nuts. Even Kurloz and Damara appear, both silent, both seemingly unable to detach themselves enough to just leave the group. 

You think about last winter and the way the autumn Bright season flips so quickly into cold, rainy Dim. First House had been half unfinished inside and for a little while everyone had been sleeping in this same room, heated only with a fire in the big hearth and the bodies of too many people, half of whom were awake while you liked to sleep. Everyone had been snappish until sleep deprivation made you all stop caring about the constant murmurs and the bright LED lanterns. You'd gotten so used to sleeping near other people that you started waking up sprawled against Gamzee's back every day, and then in his arms, and then Karkat had yelled at you both to stop dancing around being flushed since it was obvious to everyone with a functional think-pan and even some without.

You remind yourself how, at the time, living in this room had been stressful and full of fights and annoyances and back-biting intrigues. You'd looked forward to moving rocks in the cold rain all night just to get away. But now it feels nice and a little nostalgic to all be here together again. And just like that some things Dirk told you about human love and family groups become completely clear to you. If the way your feelings for a person can spill over onto everyone they care about, maybe the way you feel about a place can spill over onto the people in it, or the way you feel about people can spill over onto a place. Maybe meetings would be better if you were all in a nice cuddly circle like this instead of having to watch Karkat and Rose stand over you barbing each other. 

Rose gets everyone's attention by asking Latula to tell her the story of their explorations. It's actually a longer and more exciting story than you'd imagined. Latula is a good storyteller, dropping a lot of her weird radgirlisms as she gets into it. Mituna chimes in imperiously with details and corrections, then apologizes every time. He blushes furiously when they get to the part about his heat and Sollux kind of wiggles over until he can pat Mituna's back. Mituna shoves him off, then pulls him back into a hug, a few psionic sparks crackling like static between them. A moment later they're having some kind of impossible-to-follow whispered argument. Latula interrupts herself and tells them to cut their freaky twin shit out. They give her disconcertingly identical who-me grins, but break it up obligingly.

Latula demands that Rufioh tell his part of the story. It's a little more halting and hard to follow than the version he'd told you. Jade prompts you to tell your half of finding Rufioh. You kind of ramble a little, realizing halfway though that you are embarrassingly tipsy from your one glass of wine. You don't really mind when Vriska takes over to “tell it right from the beginning.”

Aradia and Rose report their parts of the story, up through finding Calliope and persuading Kurloz to come home with them. The last part they seem to have accomplished mostly by means of implacable feminine fussing and John being John. The silence underlying their story deepens when they explain about the meteor they were found in.

Calliope has been suspiciously quiet, ensconced between Roxy and Rufioh, clutching a cup but not drinking. 

“It is most likely not the same meteor that some of you rode into the fourth session but just a translation, like we are,” she says. “But I believe it was the same building and the same room that my brother and I were imprisoned in. Will be. Millions of years from now, when this sun is in its dying throes. I have thought for some time that there was something strangely familiar about this world. I put it down to its nature as an altered copy of the previous universe, or possibly my own powers as a Space player. But it turned out to be much more personal than that.”

“And that's why you fucking absconded without notice?” Karkat asks. “Because you got close enough to home that your Space shit told you it was there? You could have fucking said something.”

Calliope lowers her head, her pale hair shining delicate green in the lamplight.

“It's all right,” Rose tells her. “We'd have figured out he was alive eventually. You've done what you thought you needed to.”

“I felt that you would all be safer not knowing about that place. Because, if it drew me to it, it would also draw my brother. I was – am – rather afraid what the consequences might be, were he to come into conflict with all of you again. You can't imagine my surprise when I found Kurloz already there.” 

“So what you're telling me is that your brother, Lord English, the same hideous ghost-murdering, reality-shattering asshole we destroyed an entire multiverse to get away from is somehow here, on this planet, right now, with all of us,” Karkat says. He has the distant, shut-down look of an especially ragey oncoming rage. Gamzee slings an arm around him. 

“Well,” Calliope says, “Right now may not be entirely accurate. He is the Lord of Time, after all. But yes, an iteration of him exists here. The algorithm that transposed us into this universe selected for Players and he is one.” 

Silence. 

“By iteration, you mean he was changed as we were,” Rose says.

“Yes. I imagine it was even more of a shock for him than it was for me,” Calliope says. “It has not been entirely easy for me to have so many previously unavailable emotions all suddenly present. Even though many were emotions I actively desired and found fascinating.”

“How long have you known this?” Kanaya asks.

“Since we first arrived. His departure from our timeframe was nearly instantaneous, but I would know him anywhere.” 

Damara says something, her voice smoke-rough on her odd consonants.

“She says she knew,” Dirk translates. “She's seen hints of him in the timestream. She also disparaged our general level of intelligence.”

Damara says something else, blowing smoke in Dirk's general direction. 

“Damn, doll, that's nasty,” Rufioh says. 

“Whatever,” Dirk says. “For the record, I also knew. Because he's trolled me.” Dirk's face gives no hint of his opinion on said trollings.

Sollux starts swearing. “That means he's been here, close enough to be in range of the wireless. He knows where we are. I should have seen him somewhere in the user logs. I would have seen him if I weren't such-” 

“Shhhh,” Feferi says, pulling Sollux against her chest. You look away from their little moment, but notice several of the humans watching like there's nothing particularly weird or private about getting full-on shoosh-papped surrounded by all your other quadrants, neighbors and friends. John and Roxy in particular look like they find it adorable.

“What exactly was the content of your conversations with him?” Rose asks Dirk.

“It was only once, and it was just the usual nonsense. A few empty threats and some bizarre perving on the tamest, palest shit you could possibly imagine. He was trying really hard to act like he always did around me, I think. Sent me a few pictures. Surprisingly, they were actually cohesive enough to interpret as representational. Guess that's evidence that you two actually did have your weird right-brain-left-brain shit sorted out in the translation.” 

“A more important fucking question,” Karkat grates, “Might be why the fuck you didn't feel the need to tell anyone about this little bulge-bumping session. The reason that I'm not asking this pants-shittingly obvious question is because I already know your insufferable dickprince arrogance towers above even the stratospheric heights of my completely platonic hatred of you, you smug ironic fuck.”

“Thought it would do more harm that good,” Dirk says. “Cat's out of the proverbial bag now, though.”

“Well,” Rose says, “The question we should be asking ourselves at this juncture, then, is what, if anything, we're going to do about him.”

“And that,” Vriska hisses, pointing at Kurloz and his egg.

Damara narrows her eyes dangerously and rattles off a long stream of gibberish.

“She says if you want to harm the Lord's consort or child you'll have to go through her,” Dirk translates. Damara gestures at him. “Fine, she also says that her powers of temporal inevitability will leave your pathetic luck bleeding for the carrionbeasts. For future reference, I'm not going to translate all of your fucked up sexual innuendos, Timewitch.”

“Gogdamnit, we decided when we got here that there would be no more killing anyone! And that means that no one is going after you or him,” Karkat flails an accusing finger at Kurloz and Damara, “Or any other homewrecker on this nookstink planet. Even if you're terrible, even if you fuck shit up, and even if you for some unfathomable reason still want to worship that skullface asshole. I'd say go fucking hogwild on his spastically blinking bulge for all I care but, oops, it's a little late for that! The first and only rule is that abso-fucking-lutely no one may off themselves or anyone else is that crystal fucking clear?”

Kurloz lifts his eyebrows and nods, once. Damara laughs and says something brief.

“She understands,” Dirk says. 

“Does that include my brother?” Calliope asks, softly. 

All the warmth and closeness you were appreciating an hour ago is a complete shambles now. The room is tense, fear and disbelief splashed across everyones' faces. Calliope has a translucent tear sliding down her face. Rufioh moves over to her, patting her back. She presses her face into his shoulder. Karkat sighs, runs a hand over his face and into his hair. 

“For now, I guess it does, if only because we have no way of finding him. But all bets are off if he messes with us in any way, shape or form. And! No one is allowed to go off on any dumbass suicide runs looking for him, Vriska.”

“Yo,” Meenah says, holding a hand up to stop Vriska's retort. “I'm formulating a glubbing krilliant plan here. If we keep his clown-ass boyfriend, his wriggler and his number one fangirl on our hook, we can just reel him in, kick his skull ass and that'll be that. Problem solved.”

“Meenah, how many times do I have to ask you not to antagonize Damara?” Aranea sighs. “Aside from the obvious difficulties you might have kicking his skull ass, there's also the problem of keeping people here against their will. It seems like that would set a bad precedent and now that I've said it out loud I'm no longer sure why you would care. Setting a bad precedent is kind of your thing.”

“Oh, clam on, Serket Mark One, why you gotta wave off all my strait up amazing ideas. Thought you was my bestie up in here.” Meenah flops herself down across Aranea's lap and looks up at her beseachingly. Vriska shoves Meenah's feet off of her.

“If you come up with something more ethically and tactically sound, I promise I'll support you one hundred percent,” Aranea says.

“Hehehe, sound like an inlet! Shell yeah, talk nautical to me, baby.”

“Um, anyway,” John says, “This might be kind of a dumb question, but isn't there anything we can do to, like, I don't know, set him up to fail? Or make him weaker, or even stop him from flying off the handle in the first place? Like, in the future?” 

“Even if we were able to effect causality from this portion of the time loop, all we would manage is to doom this timeline,” Aradia says. “But I expect anything we try will have already happened.”

“Can I say something?” you ask.

Aradia nods at you.

“I really like it here with everyone,” you say. “And all of the terrible stuff that happened firstly has already happened and secondly kind of had to happen to get us here. So, I really hope no one is unhappy enough now to want to doom this timeline. And if anyone is, I hope they would let us try to fix things before they did anything. Because, I feel like we could fix it, if you let us.” 

“Tavros is correct,” Kankri says. “Constructive dialog should always be our first course of action when any kind of inter- or intra-personal issues arise that need resolution. Myself and the other members of both the Seers' Open Dialog Committee and the Panel of Co-friendleaders remain available to assist anyone with any concern of any kind at any time. So, please feel free to approach whichever one of us you feel most comfortable airing your concerns to. Also rest assured that we will consider the Lord English question and our potential course of action extensively in a series of open meetings.”

“You're not going to make us sit through all those meetings, are you?” Cronus asks.

“Not if you don't want to,” Kankri says. “I did say open meetings, not mandatory meetings, did I not?”

“What if _I_ don't want to?” Meenah asks. 

“If you no longer want to sit on the co-friendleaders panel, we could not possibly force you to. We did manage things fairly well in your previous absence,” Rose says. 

“Fuck that,” Meenah says, “If I let you suckerfish run this place all by yourshellves you'll just spend hours glubbing out your blow holes while we sit here undefended like chumps. We need to get our shit together before anyfin else goes down. You agree with me, right Shouty?”

“I agree that we need to tighten up our fucking security,” Karkat says, “If you can tighten up something that doesn't actually exist.”

“Then, I nominate the two of you to head up the Community Safety Committee,” Kankri says. 

Aranea and Rose both second the motion. Meenah protests that she didn't sign up for no committee, she was thinking more like a glubbing army. Jane and Kankri express concern over the potential militarization of the village. Karkat forestalls the massive multi-way argument that seems poised to ensue with some good old fashioned shouting. Midway through the shouting, Dirk points out that Kurloz and Damara aren't there anymore.

“They haven't gone far,” Porrim says. “But I imagine they may want to leave the village again.”

“Can you really blame them?” Jane says. She stands, glaring around at everyone. “Well, I for one am not going to let them go off thinking they're unwelcome here. I think we have an obligation to them, unless the rule about not killing anyone is total bullshit!” 

She marches out. Roxy stands, sways, then sits back down.

“Urgh,” she says, “Eq, c'n you go wiv 'er fer me?”

“Of course.” Equius shrugs off Eridan's hold on his wrist and follows.

“I better go with them too,” Dirk says. “But, obviously, we're going to need to set up a perimeter and get some long range sensors to keep watch. Information is the thing we're most lacking, here.”

He leaves. 

“Finally a practical fucking suggestion,” Karkat says. “Right. Anyone whose range is wide enough to cover the whole village needs to stay while we draw up a watch rotation. The rest of you can go get on with your night. But no one leaves the village until we have some kind of coherent defense plan together, and no, Zahhak, I do not care how much it pains you to be separated from your water-driven nook-pummeling masterpiece of classical sculpture.”

“Gross, Karkat,” John says. “Listen, guys, I know this sounds like a lot of bad news. But I thought about it a lot on the way back here, and, okay. If he can travel through time, that means he could show up any time at all. So if he were going to try anything against us, the smart thing for him to do would have been to go after us when we were all separated, or when the village wasn't very built up. And he didn't. Uh, I guess except to make sweet love to Kurloz?” 

“Gross, John,” Dave says.

“No, man, he told me it wasn't like, violent or anything. Or, I asked and he shook his head,” John says. “But you're getting me off track here. Guys, we are basically a whole freaking village of super heroes. It would be like Lex Luthor trying to bust into Justice League Headquarters during a Justice League Family Reunion. We already proved we're stronger than him once, when we trapped him in the old multiverse. So, really he's the one who should be scared here. We just have to maybe start keeping a better eye out, just to prevent any more stupid drama.”

John smiles widely. “So, that's it! Good party you guys! Thanks for the really warm welcome back!” 

The meeting breaks up. You put yourself onto the watch rota for a shift between sunset and midnight meal, when Gamzee is always busy in the kitchens. Then you take your egg and your matesprit and go home.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> standing watch; life keeps going

People are talking in the meeting block as you arrive for your first shift keeping watch. You relieve Horuss and Meulin, who are standing watch together until Horuss can determine whether his Void powers actually allow him to detect anything useful. He is always polite to you, but alternates between creepily attentive and subtly pained while in your presence.

“I have already discovered many things by searching the Void within myself,” he tells you, “So, if I can just get the hang of it, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to find things outside of myself as well. I will just allow my Aspect to show me where Lord English is not. In time and with practice I may even be able to locate disruptions in the fabric of space-time itself. Instability always draws us Pages, does it not?”

“I think, maybe, it does,” you say, thinking of Gamzee, of Vriska.

“Is there anything you won't use your silly title as an excuse for, Mr. Silly Hooves?” Meulin teases. “Come on, let little Nitram get to work.”

She takes his arm and drags him off, his protest lost in the low buzz of voices echoing out in the hall. The room designated as the watch-post is one of two small ones built over the winter as a space for feelings jams and other private moments. Now this one is mostly empty except for a couple of chairs and a poorly-tuned piano. Mituna and Latula are living in the other until space opens up in the Dorms for them.

You open the window to let in the night breeze, settle your egg on your lap, and start to relax. Distantly, you can hear Karkat saying something about “overthinking this shit for untold aeons.” Kankri's reply is too low to make out, but you let its monotonous rhythm lull you. The bodies in the meeting block come into focus, their Breaths variously angry, agitated or sleepy. You can feel the heat of the ovens rising from the kitchens, Gamzee's Breath calm and familiar as he works. You let your senses expand past the walls of First House, noting each person's location as you sweep outwards.

You can smell-feel the ozone of psionics and the mass of stones being moved through the air over on the other side of the co-friendleaders' house. A bunch of people are building a little house for Cronus and Kankri, since no one is willing to let them punch a door through the wall between their rooms in the Dorms, especially not now that there are so many people to try and accommodate. As a bonus, their new place is far enough off that no one will have to listen to their bickering or their loud sex. 

The forge is cold tonight, but Dirk and Equius are at work in the machine shop, Horuss moving toward them. Jade and Porrim are out in the gardens. The strife-yard is full of harsh Breathing and the zing of projectiles as Meenah directs practice duels. Off in the woods, Rufioh's familiar touch guides the descent of a tree Kanaya just felled.

Watching your friends is engaging, but not at all what you're supposed to be doing. You try to sort of zoom your view out as far as you can, working to hold the whole village as one image in your mind. You stretch out and out, over the beach, bay and cliffs, over the steep sides of the river valley, the scatter of little houses, the waving fields of grain. Your runner-bird flock is a swirl of twitchy activity patrolling the edge of the forest. Further out you sense tree-beasts and fleet-beasts and Damara pacing on the river path, trailing smoke behind her.

You hold the whole valley in your mind, knowing it through the air that surrounds it. Its workings are busy and intricate as an insect colony. How will you know, you wonder, if Lord English arrives? Would his Breath be somehow unnatural, his presence a disruption, raw and obvious as a wound? Or might he somehow slip by you, appearing in the thick of all this life, a presence deceptively familiar until you look closer? You touch Calliope's Breath as she and Roxy putter around the Seafang, noting the peculiarities and rhythms of it. You try to imagine her feel overlaid with the harsh panting roil of Karkat whipping himself into a rage, with a hint of Damara's mocking laughter. 

You wonder if he'll want to come to see his baby, and if he feels as bad about killing people as Gamzee or Eridan or Terezi. Even Vriska feels bad about some things, you're pretty sure. You wonder if he has nightmares.

And then you realize that he could be absent from your time not because he's wallowing in remorse somewhere, but because he's busy fucking up the future. Your daughter, all of your children might be the ones who have to fight him next time. 

At the center of your bubble of air, your body sits relaxed, your egg exuding its subtle Breath in your lap. You want to make it easy for her to find her strength, much easier than it was for you. You hope you can figure out how.

You come back to yourself, slowly, with Porrim's hand on your arm. Your shift is over. You tell her there was nothing unusual, you don't think. She smiles and thanks you for your hard work. You're not even tired from holding such a deep trance for those few hours. You know you could go for much longer, but it's nice not to have to. 

As you leave, you chance across John and Dave having what looks like a very pale moment on one of the porch swings. Dave's glasses are firmly in place though it's the middle of the night, the waxing crescent of the Big moon hanging in the sky. John is leaning casually against his side.

“Hey, Tavros,” Dave says. “Dude, come chill with us.”

“Oh!” you say, looking them over again, “Do you need an egg? Uh, we can share mine while I whisper someone-”

“No,” John says, “I don't want one.”

“I'm trying to talk some sense into him,” Dave says. “So don't go anywhere until we're ready to take you up on that offer.”

You shrug and sit down on the edge of the porch. You can hear the chirpy cawing of the runner-birds at the edge of the woods.

“I just want to be a good dad,” John says. “Like my dad was. It would be a way to remember him.” 

“You can remember him without popping a kid out,” Dave says. “I'm like year older than you, now, what with all the time shenanigans, and I'm still too young for this shit.” 

“Come on, it's not like it's going to ruin my career or something,” John says. “The only thing I'm worried about it ruining is our family! Why do you think I'm talking to you about it before I do anything?”

“Yeah, Egbert, you're tearing this family apart! You with your being all heroic and not going off cheating on the clusterfuck n-drangle you didn't trick us into.”

“I don't know why you're the only one hung up on the Sollux thing. I thought you were cool with just taking stuff as it is. That's kind of how polyamory is supposed to work, I thought. I talked about it with Rose and Aradia and Fef a lot on the way back. Everyone but you thinks it's good for them.”

“The way Captor works is not actually how anything else in the universe works, except maybe Captor Senior. And even 'Tuna somehow limits himself to one waifu at a time.” Dave sighs, “I don't actually care who Karkles is banging, dude. If anyone ever needed to relieve some tension it's that guy, and it's not like you were being particularly helpful there. It's just, I thought you and me and 'Rezi had this on lockdown, finally. Is a little goddamn stability in my personal life so much to ask?”

“You're scared,” John says, kissing his temple.

“Oh my god, Egbert, this is about the worst possible time for gay-chicken bro-makeouts you could possibly imagine. Not even ironic, just stupid. And furthermore, I've faced down so much worse than an itch in your alien space vagina this isn't even close to being a thing.”

“I'm not making out with you!” John says, peevishly. “And if I were, it wouldn't be ironically. Jegus, Dave, I'm sitting here trying to ask you to co-father my kid!”

“John,” Dave says, and kind of trails off. John leans the last little bit over and kisses Dave softly on the mouth. 

“If we have a daughter we're naming her Casey,” Dave says, sounding a little strangled.

“Oh my GOD shut up,” John says. “I cannot even believe you won't let that go. I deleted it off my laptop while we were still crossing the Yellow Yard. It is not even a thing that exists anymore.”

“How can you say that? Casey may live on in only the most beautiful of memories, but to deny her shitty fifteen minutes of screen time ever happened? That is cold, man. That is undeniably cold. Colder than Hoth after its sun burns out, just hurtling along through the lightless void of a galaxy far far away.”

“Fine, if we have a boy we're naming him Hella Jeff.”

“I'm all right with that.”

“Thirded,” Terezi cackles. “Our offspring must be schoolfed from hatching in the way of all things hella Cool.”

“Oh fuck no,” Karkat says. “I invoke my co-friendleader veto. Naming our kids after any of your terrible inside jokes is hereby banned forever.”

He's got a sheaf of papers in one hand and a deep, tired scowl. Terezi makes a pouty face at him, hanging off his arm. Behind them, Kankri and Rose are moving off down the path toward the gardens, deep in conversation.

“Hi Karkat!” John chirps. He jumps up to throw his arms around Karkat, probably-not-accidentally elbowing Dave and dislodging Terezi in the process. 

Karkat allows it, leaning his face against John's hair. Terezi snickers and wanders over to prod Dave with her cane. 

“You're actually serious about going through with this, huh,” Karkat says gruffly.

“Yeah,” John says. “Wanna help? You smell good.”

“You guys don't, uh, actually need me here for this, do you?” you ask. 

Karkat startles and glares at you over John's shoulder, his posture losing all its softness. 

Dave stands and shakes his head. “Thanks anyway, Tavros,” he says. “You can field this one, for now, Vantas. I'mma take this fine, completely psychotic lady on an ironically romantic outing.”

Karkat transfers his glare to Dave, but nods shortly.

“Swoooon!” Terezi exclaims, “And what shall we do on this date, Coolkid? Is irony or romance to be the more prevalent theme?” 

“Baby, you know my romance and my irony are inseparable as Nic Cage and his mullet in a certain inside joke that may not be named.”

“You are so lame, sometimes, I swear,” John says, rolling his eyes. 

Terezi cackles some more and starts hauling Dave away by the wrist. John snags Dave's shirt before they can walk off. 

“See you at home,” John says, and it's more a command than a question.

Dave nods. John lets him go.

*

The door to the kitchen is propped open, letting the cool night air in. You can see Gamzee through it, sitting at the big worktable in a straight-backed wooden chair. As you get closer, you take in the red egg in his lap and the stillness of his unscarred face, and realize it's actually Kurloz. Your stomach sinks.

Gamzee and Jane are both there too, busy washing tubers and cutting up a haunch of some kind of meat. They move around each other in their space with the ease of long practice. The silence, though, is just this side of strained. 

“Um, hello?” you say. “Need any more help in here?” 

Gamzee looks up at you with such raw relief it makes your heart squeeze.

“Won't never turn away such a fine offer from such a fine motherfucker,” he says. 

You take a seat at the table and start peeling the starchy, knotty tubers which have become a staple during the grain-farming project's long experimental phase. Jane presses another paring knife into Kurloz's hand, patting him encouragingly. He works willingly enough, but his presence is like a black hole that draws in all sound.

“Kurloz,” you say. Your heart pounds in your chest. He and Gamzee will always both feel your nervousness no matter how good you get at hiding it. “Can I ask you about – about Lord English?”

He looks at you for the first time since you came in. His mouth pulls up into his weird, blank smile and he gestures for you to go ahead.

“I was just wondering, uh, what he is actually like, now.”

Kurloz's dark gaze bores into you. Like a hand slapped to your forehead, your think-pan is hit with a wave of rage-rage-rage-confusion-frustration-loneliness that trails off into a swell of desperate, ashamed tenderness. You sway on your chair with the force of it, and it's a moment before you remember how to breathe. Gamzee is across the room in a flash, as if his physical body could possibly shield you from the Prince of Rage. 

“Motherfucker,” Gamzee says, dangerously. “Keep your motherfucking claws outta his pan.”

HE UP AND ASKED THE QUESTION, MY OTHER SELF

Kurloz's mental voice is like a cold talon tracing your skull from the inside.

“Don't be up and calling me that. I ain't you and you ain't me.”

FOR ONCE YOU SPEAK TRUTH, BETRAYER OF THE RIGHTEOUS MOTHERFUCKING CAUSE

Gamzee's voice is low and harshly controlled. “I up and decided that these here motherfuckers had a better fucking cause, is all. The vast honk came and went, and it turned out to be no kind of thing to get your hope on for.”

THE VAST HONK UP AND USHERED US INTO PARADISE. YOU DANCED YOUR STEPS AS THE MOTHERFUCKING PROPHETS FORETOLD, BROTHER. YOUR CHOICES MEAN NOTHING.

Gamzee slams a hands on the table. The bowls of tubers jump and your discarded knife clatters on the cutting board. 

_“Wrong,_ motherfucker,” he says, and walks out.

You hurry after him. He moves just far enough off into the grass to leave the splash of light spilling from from the open door. He squats, leaning his forehead on his crossed arms on his knees. You step up close behind him, reaching down to touch his back. He leans against you, bracing himself against your legs, but doesn't look up. 

Jane crouches next to him, the spiral tips of her horns silhouetted against the kitchen's light. 

“Up and had to get out of there, chef-sis. Sorry,” Gamzee says.

“No, I'm sorry. I brought him even though I knew you might be uncomfortable. But we have to learn to get along, all of us. I'll handle the rest of breakfast. You never take shifts off, anyway.”

“All this righteous grub ain't gonna up and cook itself. Just like a motherfucker ain't gonna up and make a new thing of himself without some motherfucking strict effort.” 

“Well,” Jane says, “All any of us can do is keep trying. But sometimes a little break will let us come back trying even harder.” 

Gamzee looks over at her, and you can hear a little curl of a smile in his voice. “Now there's some real motherfucking truth, chef-sis. Knew the moment I up and met you that you had a good head on those shoulders.” 

Jane laughs her goofy, hooting laugh. “Really? When I first met you I thought you'd make a terrible guide. But now I think I was wrong.”

“Nah, you were motherfucking right. But things change, chef-sis.”

She pats him on the shoulder. “Go on, now. Go do something fun. Want me to hold your egg for a while?”

You unsling it and hand it to her. 

“Are you up and sure, Tav-” Gamzee starts.

“An hour here or there shouldn't make a difference,” Jane says. “I'll bring it down to your house if I don't see you at breakfast.”

You grin so wide at Gamzee, you're afraid it will ruin the surprise. 

“TAG!” you yell, slapping him on the back and shoving. He goes over with an “Oof,” and you take off running down the path. 

“Oh, it's motherfucking ON!” You hear him say. 

You use a little Breath to keep your footsteps as light as possible. It really helps you keep your speed up as the dune path turns from packed sand to soft. You can hear Gamzee pant lightly behind you as he sinks in ankle-deep with each step. Down by the water, where the sand turns hard again he inevitably starts to catch up. You dodge a few steps into the warm waves, stop short and sweep a huge kick of water at him, a puff of wind ensuring it stays airborne until it reaches him. He keeps coming, his hair suddenly plastered to his face in dripping curls. You shriek a little as he grabs you around the waist, spins you around and throws you. You snatch a quick Breath as you hit the water, let yourself settle to the bottom and lurk until he stumbles closer. Distantly, you hear him say your name. 

“Rrrraagh!” you yell, bursting to your feet to tackle him. He lets out a startled, laughing honk as you both fall. 

You are kissing him as his back comes gently to rest on the sand. Making out underwater is maybe not as fun as advertised. The taste of salt is thick. The waves tug at your horns and clothes and your lips keep getting jostled apart. You struggle to your feet, holding him down and noogying him thoroughly. And then you're shoving and splashing and wrestling and chasing like the children you never were on Alternia. His skirt gets all tangled around his legs so he just strips out of it. He gets your wet shirt caught around your horns, and both of you laugh so hard your stomachs hurt. 

Exhausted and half-clothed, then unclothed, you float together, washed back and forth by the roll of the bay. His hands ghost over your body, dancing like delicate sea creatures. You kneed the muscles of his neck and shoulders gently.

“We'll up and teach her how to swim soon as we can,” he tells you, dreamily. “Bet she'll want to play on the beach every motherfucking day.”

“That sounds like fun,” you say. 

“So much fun. Gonna make our little girl the happiest wiggler in the history of paradox space. Ain't no drop of motherfucking darkness gonna touch her.”

“But in case it does, somehow, we'll make sure she's really smart and brave, too.”

“Of course we motherfucking will,” he murmurs into your hair. 

You rest against his chest, feeling the way you sink as your lungs deflate, float as they inflate. You match your breathing to Gamzee's until you're bobbing slow together in unison, as much of your skin pressed against him as you can manage.

“Gamzee,” you say, “I want to take you apart with my tongue.” 

He shivers all over against you.

“Motherfuck, Tav,” he grates. 

His legs part to let you closer and then your hips are flush, your seedflaps pressed together so you can feel the stir of his bulge-tip. It would be so easy to let go and do terribly indecent things with him right in the middle of the public beach. If your heat weren't so well suppressed by days of continuous contact with your egg, you probably wouldn't be able to help yourself. 

Instead you take him home and do terribly indecent things to each other in private. 

Jane smiles kindly and only a little knowingly when you answer your door wrapped in a sheet. She hands your egg back to you and says she and Roxy are available to egg-sit anytime. Eridan, though, gives you an incredibly smug and knowing look when he stops by to give back Gamzee's favorite skirt, which he found getting washed out of the bay on the tide. Later, you and Gamzee drop off supplies at the co-friendleaders' house and you somehow manage not laugh at Karkat's amazing bedhead. At least, not to his face. 

Cronus throws a housewarming party that everyone agrees is the best party you've had yet. Turntables are set up, ill beats showcased. Equius and Horuss move the piano all the way there from First House so John and Jane can play too, and there is a massive rap battle that mostly ends up with people heckling and laughing over each other. Karkat's burns are voted the sicknastiest even though he wasn't an official participant and none of them rhymed. After that, there is a lot more music around the village, as if everyone suddenly remembered how good it makes them feel.

You feel good about things, which is good because things just keep happening. Drama and domesticity, arguing and camaraderie and work and love jumble together, filling your nights and days. 

You find you're definitely okay with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends this first installment of the 5I series. Thank you once more to everyone who's read along, commented and generally helped me feel like not such a crazy tool for writing 50k of mpreg. Look for more sidestories coming soon. If you're interested in any related meta, notes or an Ask post, please see my Dreamwidth: [universe-c.dreamwidth.org](http://universe-c.dreamwidth.org/).


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